Insatiable
by Nimfalath
Summary: COMPLETE When Lyra arrives at St. Sophia’s, students begin disappearing. To save her name and her life, Lyra must find a way to stop the true culprit before she becomes the next victim, and destroying this ancient evil is much more difficult than it seems
1. Prologue

Insatiable

Prologue

__

Dear Reader,

This prologue may confuse you. Don't think too hard about it. This is just a little glimpse of the future, and a reason to stick around.

Enjoy!

* * *

Lyra's head rushed, darkness obscured her vision. She stared through the layer of crimson, stared at _him_ long and hard, trying desperately to read the expression on his face. She was panting, shaking, drained of all energy. Feebly, she stood, lurching to the side in her vulnerable state.

She knew very clearly—painfully clearly—that she was his prey. Even right now, as he drew nearer to her trembling body, she was gripped by that fear. She also knew that she had fallen for it. A voice screamed that simple fact at her, shouted it furiously in her ear. She had come to him as eagerly as a moth to the flame.

The hunter had set out his traps and caught a perfectly idiotic girl.

She wouldn't have minded if this were merely her end. At this point, it would've been a relief to get it over with.

But that wasn't the problem.

The problem was that it might _not_ be her death. A part of her would certainly die—a part of herself that she loved more dearly than her own life—but what if she continued to live? What if she _didn't_ die? That notion hit her like a physical blow, and Lyra Silvertongue began to sob; it was too late! Her life as a whole being had already ended!

This creature signified the inexorable death of her very soul.


	2. St Sophia's

**Chapter 1: St. Sophia's**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated: T (for later chapters)

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

Everything was changing. Lyra could feel it all around her, suffocating her with its weight. The thin girl took a deep, shuddering breath and held the air in. Spots flickered in her vision before she let the air escape again, and by that time she was dizzy and lightheaded enough that the feeling was somewhat diminished. She could not help the growing numbness in her heart; it was the result of the utter fear that overwhelmed her. Would they fit in? Would they like going to an actual school? Would the other girls like them? Pantalaimon, her silky pine marten dæmon, pulled himself off the seat back and slid down her arm in a lethargic movement, his round little ears flat against his head. When the girl brushed her fingers over his sinuous body, she could feel the tremors that shook his slight frame. She bit her lip, trying to hold herself together.

"Lyra, dear," came a smooth, feminine voice, "please settle down. I'm certain you will enjoy yourself at St. Sophia's. My dear, whatever is wrong with you?" Dame Hannah, her faded eyes sparkling with worry, had every reason to fear for Lyra Silvertongue. The girl looked paler than death, and her poor dæmon was shaking in terror. Dame Hannah's old marmoset dæmon flicked a fearful glance at his human, moved by the Dame's matronly urge to comfort the young pair. The woman placed a withered hand on Lyra's shoulder. Lyra was no longer the awkward, growing adolescent she remembered so vividly from a few years earlier, but had grown into a fair, ripe young woman. A beautiful adult. Or nearly so, because Lyra was yet seventeen, and her eighteenth birthday was not for several months to come.

Dame Hannah brushed a lock of flaxen hair from Lyra's face—which no longer bulged in the roundness of youth, but gave hints of cheekbones and a smooth, sharp chin—and the girl's anxious blue eyes flashed up and met the Dame's. The warm, caring gaze of the elderly woman melted away the stiffness of Lyra's heart, and Lyra sighed, furrowing her light brows.

"Lyra, you will love our college," the gray-haired woman affirmed again, smiling gently. "Try not to worry, dear. Just give it a little while. You've met some of the scholars before, and the headmistress is well acquainted with you already, so what are you afraid of?"

"I en't afraid of anything," Lyra muttered with a grimace. Pantalaimon nipped her finger lightly, and, after scowling at him, she added more politely, "I really am looking forward to living there. I haven't lived anywhere other than Jordan College before, so I _am_ nervous, a bit."

Lyra peered out of her window, gazing longingly back down the road. Her Jordan College had been out of seeing distance for miles, but her yearning eyes searched for it nevertheless. Through the bleak, misty grays of the world around her, she only barely recognized the pear trees and ornamental bushes that lined the path to north Oxford, her new home.

Nothing much had ever daunted Lyra Silvertongue, the friend of bears and witches, but the unfamiliar turf looming in her near future intimidated her more than anything had before. What did _she _know about girls her age? Lyra was horrified; she had little experience with girls, being the childhood friend of urchins and servant boys, and St. Sophia's was a school _full_ of girls! Even the scholars were female.

It was enough cause to justify her restlessness.

And what would they think of her? Lyra's education, as the Master of Jordan College had pointed out, was "based largely upon which scholars she intimidated least." Though she _had _received lessons from the Master and some of the scholars in the last few years, she felt terribly inadequate. How far behind Lyra and Pantalaimon must be—the intellectuals of St. Sophia's would surely think nothing of them. Most of Lyra's knowledge revolved around experimental theology, which—they both knew well—would amount to little. Many were still skeptical about _Dust_'s existence, though it very plainly _did_ exist. And what use were navigational skills or the ability to take anbaromagnetic readings at St. Sophia's College?

They would seem like fools!

"I won't mind if they think we're idiots," Pantalaimon whispered in her ear as he climbed to her shoulder, curling around her neck, his familiar place. "They probably know more than we do anyway. But we know lots of stuff that they'll never learn, like how Dust works, and about all the other worlds… They can study forever and never learn any of that." His bushy tail caressed her cheek, warm and light against her skin. His words were comforting; they spoke to her heart, and she knew they were true.

"Yes," she whispered back, only to him. "That's right. And if we've got each other, why, should we really need others?"

"Oh, Lyra, but you _do_ need to make friends here. You need friends who are not old scholars or servants. And you ought to find friends who are _girls_ your age, or else you shall never learn to behave like a proper lady."

Lyra swallowed hard, averting her gaze from him.

"Yes," she admitted again, narrowing her eyes as she peered through the dim haze. "Yes, you're right, Pantalaimon."

When their ride arrived at the college, they immediately abandoned the anbaric cab and headed out through the mist. Dame Hannah, holding her furry monkey dæmon loosely in her arms, led the way into the cobweb-gray fog, somehow sure of her surroundings despite the obscured conditions. At first the buildings were invisible, but as they approached Lyra could make out dark, looming shapes and hints of tall trees. Pantalaimon's whiskers had collected little drops of dew, and as he strained his neck out through the air they sparkled like crystals.

Presently, a bell tower made itself visible, and the rest of the building materialized in front of them. Though the world was washed out like a faded silver nitrate emulsion photogram, the University was absolutely breathtaking. There was a sophistication in the architecture distinctly different than Jordan College, yet it somehow managed to echo the same style of her old home. There were only a few buildings visible from where they stood, and it would have been lovely, had the colors been distinguishable. In the twilight, the stones of the arched buildings appeared cool, blue-gray, and the roofs were only faintly warmer.

"This won't be so bad," Pantalaimon whispered to Lyra as they passed through an arched doorway. The two humans and their dæmons entered a large brick building, and Dame Hannah led them to the left of the corridor. The interior reflected the long hallways of Jordan's dorm buildings, so Lyra assumed this must be a dorm as well.

The Headmistress met them as they climbed some stairs, and Lyra shied away from the ensuing conversation. Hoping to go unnoticed, she waited patiently, staring at the wall. Pantalaimon stoically sat on her shoulder, expressing no interest at all. When the Dame had exchanged brief greetings and recent news, she finally escorted Lyra to her room.

"Now, Lyra," Dame Hannah said, placing her hands firmly on the girl's straight shoulders. The marmoset clung to her back with his claw-like nails, peering worriedly over his human's shoulder. "Lyra, you know that you will begin your tutoring immediately tomorrow morning."

"Yes, I know, Dame Hannah." Lyra looked her straight in the eyes, hoping that her heart wasn't beating as loudly as it felt.

The Dame nodded her head quickly, and her dæmon handed her a carefully folded paper. She took Lyra's hand and placed the crisp paper in her fingers. "That is your itinerary," she told Lyra Silvertongue. "Study it carefully—the particular building and room are listed next to each class."

"Dame Hannah, when shall I begin my private studies?" Lyra's blue eyes flashed an anxious sparkle at the elderly woman. This was, after all, the only reason she had come to St. Sophia's in the first place.

The woman sighed. "You will begin studying the alethiometer after you have settled into your tutoring more. Perhaps next week, if you're ready."

"Yes!" Lyra exclaimed without a thought, her body bristling with the sudden jolt of excitement.

"Very well, then."

The servants brought in Lyra's baggage as the woman left, and then Lyra was alone.

Well, not entirely, of course; human beings are never alone.

Pantalaimon scrambled to the rectangular window at the east end of the room as Lyra stacked their small suitcases behind the door. They had few belongings, so she didn't bother to unpack them right away. Instead, she crossed to the window where Pantalaimon had stretched out and gazed through the cool panes. Their small room was on the upper story of the building, so below them lay an excellent view of the grounds (if it were not overcast) and a perfect escape to the roof.

Pantalaimon grinned at the thought of fleeing to the roofs, knowing sadly that they would probably never have the opportunity to explore them, what with being responsible young adults now and all.

"Oh, tush," Lyra scoffed, leaping onto the springy twin bed that sat below the windowsill. She seized Pantalaimon in her arms, nuzzling her nose in his orange-brown hair. Suddenly she fell somber. Pantalaimon's whiskers brushed her face, and his little nose touched her cheek.

"Lyra, don't be sad," he said, snuggling into her neck. "We're not so old yet, and we're certainly not grown up, not really. And anyway, no one knows us yet, so we can act however we want. If you want to act like Lizzie Brooks again and be slow and stupid, then we will! We'll be quiet and just blend in, and no one will pay us a second thought. We'll…we'll be like Will. And then we can go on the roofs any time we want, just like when we were at Jordan with Roger and the others."

Lyra nodded once, suppressing her breath and her tears.

"You'll see," he crooned. "We'll be fine."

But—of course; when had fate been kind to Lyra Silvertongue?—the next day they discovered that all hope of blending in was an impossibility. Lyra was the most recognizable girl at the college. She was the only golden-haired girl at the school, besides one other who was nothing special compared to Lyra and her beautiful pine marten dæmon.

And besides that, everyone already seemed to know exactly who Lyra was.

"Look, it's Lyra Silvertongue!" girls cried as she passed. "The girl from the North!"

"The friend of witches!"

"The _Panserbjørne_ lover!"

Lyra stiffened at each word, hurrying forward to escape their awed glances. Many years ago, she may have reveled in such glorious attention, but her childhood adventure had changed her perspective of subtlety. She was beginning to regret jumping into schooling so immediately, but, gripping her itinerary in her shaking hands, she headed out proudly over the grounds with her chin held high, avoiding peers and ignoring their stares.

She hurried over the path, searching for the proper building, when a shadow moved behind her. Suddenly a dark-haired girl, a few inches taller than Lyra, appeared over her shoulder. Lyra tried to ignore her and focus on the paper in her hands, but the girl was making it difficult; she was persistent, and there was a distinct, unshakable drone that throbbed in the air, disrupting Lyra's concentration. Lyra sighed and folded her itinerary, taking longer strides, but the hum and the girl easily kept up with the quickening pace.

"I'm heading that way as well," the girl exclaimed, pulling around beside Lyra. "I can show you the way, if you'd like."

"I know where to go," Lyra mumbled through clenched teeth. This never-ending attention was becoming a nuisance. "I've been here plenty of times."

In fact, that was partially a lie; Lyra had indeed come to St. Sophia's before, but she hadn't the slightest inclination of which direction would take her to her next scheduled class.

"My name is Alice," the girl said. "And that is Petri." She jerked a thumb at the air over her shoulder, where a tiny dæmon followed. Lyra had not noticed him before, but now she realized that he was the source of the humming. He had taken the form of a ruby-throated hummingbird, and now he flitted around to Pantalaimon, who slunk along the sidewalk at Lyra's heels.

Alice veered left, taking the disoriented Lyra with her, and continued to chatter relentlessly. "And _you_ are Lyra Belacqua-Silvertongue, who's come to study the alethiometer, right?"

Lyra narrowed her eyes and nodded. She stoically introduced Pantalaimon, but said no more after that. Did every girl know everything about her?

Alice was the type of person who didn't cope well with silence, so presently she filled in the stillness with her chattering voice.

"Is it true," Alice began animatedly, "that you were kidnapped by witches? I heard that they cast a spell on you and forced you to be their maid-servant, but you escaped by digging a tunnel with a candle-case and—"

"What?" Lyra gasped before she could stop the words from escaping. "Of course not! Don't be silly. Witches are lovely, amiable creatures." Alice leaned in elatedly, shattering every piece of Lyra's comfort.

"So you _did_ meet witches!"

Lyra paled and fell silent again, pursing her thin lips. She felt Pantalaimon's claws on her shoulder and heard his voice warn her to keep quiet. Lyra hardly needed the warning, because at the present she only felt the inescapable urge to disappear, to destroy every single idiotic rumor that had stirred up this excitement. How did anyone believe these ridiculous hyperboles?

"It's not _that_ ridiculous," Pantalaimon whispered to her. "It sounds more likely than the truth, so it does."

Lyra smiled. "It's certainly more _harmless_ than the truth."

"Oh, _you're_ Lyra Belacqua!" It was a new voice, more soft and polite, and it caught Lyra off guard. She turned and saw that a second girl had joined them, a little shorter than Alice, but gazing at Lyra with the same elated expression.

"Silvertongue," Lyra snapped without thinking. The new girl giggled and tossed her sandy-blonde hair. Beside her trotted a white-tailed deer dæmon, whose short fur was the same tan-blonde as his human's hair.

"Why Silvertongue?" Alice asked, true interest lining her face. Lyra must have been the spectacle of the school, for she noticed that the deer-girl's enormous, brown eyes were also staring intently at her (and she had also caught the attention of a few spectators on a bench within hearing range).

"Because…" Lyra began, glancing uncertainly at Pantalaimon, who shifted uneasily on her shoulder. "Someone gave me that name. A good friend."

"Who?" the two asked in unison.

Before they had articulated the question, Lyra had spotted the door to her building ahead—the plate on the stone told her so—and, seeing her opportunity to escape, she bolted for the door, shouting weakly behind her, "_Iorek Byrnison!_"

"You didn't even need to run!" Pantalaimon laughed gaily in her ear as the wind whipped their faces. "Look—you've stopped them dead in their tracks!"

Lyra didn't dare to look behind her, but Pantalaimon snuck another peek. Alice and the deer-girl, mouths agape, stood locked in an unblinking trance behind them, staring incredulously at Lyra's back as she tore into class. Lyra fumbled around the corridor, found her room, and abruptly situated herself at the seat furthest from the front of the room. Every face turned to stare at her as she sat panting in the corner, and she felt her cheeks rush hot with blood.

Her heart sank. No place was safe.

"So much for blending in," Lyra grumbled to her cowering dæmon.


	3. Rooftops

**Chapter 2: Rooftops**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T (for later chapters)

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

_Don't worry, readers! This story, though supernatural and fantastical in essence, is not entirely offbeat. Its supernatural feel is true to Lyra's world, I believe, so it shouldn't "feel" as though it is very supernatural. It does not involve ghosts (though there _are_ ghosts in Lyra's world), and it certainly does not involve aliens. I've worked very hard to make this realistic._

* * *

"Oh, wait up, Lyra, please!" panted the dark-haired girl. Lyra refused to yield, but pressed on even faster (at Pantalaimon's urging). Unfortunately, the girl—what was her name?!—was quick, and she easily caught up with the new student. "What do you have next?" she beamed, smiling madly at Lyra. She had been attached to Lyra's hip most of the morning, much to poor Lyra's dismay. Nothing she could do would sway her new fan.

"Just leave me alone, won't you?" Lyra begged.

"Wait, just let me talk!" The sparkling emerald hummingbird, like his human, never stopped moving, and he flitted annoyingly around Lyra's ears (always a safe distance away, of course, for it was the most horrific taboo for a dæmon to touch another human). The girl was quiet for once, waiting for an "ok" from Lyra. Around them, other girls—one plain-Jane with a squirrel dæmon and another with a puffy robin—had paused to catch a glimpse of the infamous Lyra Belacqua-Silvertongue. Under the weight of the stares—most significantly, the stare of her Siamese twin—Lyra folded, nodding her head in defeat.

"What is your name again?" Lyra mumbled, staring at the ground.

"Alice," she blurted, smiling her never-ceasing smile. "I only wanted to invite you to spend some time with a group of my friends tonight. We usually meet in my room, and it would be a great chance to get to know us! We won't gawk, I swear to you." She crossed her heart to emphasize that point. Lyra glared at Alice fiercely, but…

"It may be nice," Pantalaimon whispered. "You really ought to go. You need more friends who—"

"I _know_," Lyra whispered back. "You've given me that speech enough times now."

Hesitantly, Lyra turned to her new "friend." Painful though it was, she nodded her head and mouthed "all right." Alice clapped her hands in delight.

"So it begins," Lyra muttered to Pantalaimon, turning to escape before Alice and her zipping dæmon had a chance to speak.

After such a grueling morning, Lyra wanted only to relax.

* * *

A smile inevitably crawled over Lyra's face as a warm afternoon breeze played with her hair. The open sky promised to rain, but she could feel the warmth of the sun tickle her body through the few spots where the rays penetrated the clouds. She stood gracefully and teetered over the shingles until she came near one of the spiraling chimneys, where she crouched down in its shade and surveyed the grounds. St. Sophia's was much prettier than Jordan College, but she still missed her Oxford's familiar passageways and rooftops.

In a way, though, the newness of the place made it an adventure. Each new roof was uncharted territory, waiting to be discovered by them.

Speaking of _them_…

"Pantalaimon!" she shouted clearly over the roofs, forming a makeshift megaphone with her thin hands. "Pan, come _back_ here! If anyone sees you—"

"I'm right here, Lyra." She tilted her chin into the sun, and—sure enough!—there was Pantalaimon, curled up at the top of the stack. She sighed; of _course _he would have climbed somewhere. Her marten dæmon was perfectly designed for an arboreal lifestyle, so climbing trees (or chimneys, apparently) made him happier than anything. His little weasel face was beaming with elation, and every one of his tiny little teeth was visible in his wide smile. She laughed at him and held out her arms. He frowned at his human, obviously questioning her ability to catch him, but leapt down anyway. Lyra caught the weasel securely with both arms and held him close, breathing in his warm red fur.

She recoiled suddenly, coughing in mock agony. "Pan, you smell like _soot!_" She wrinkled her nose, but she couldn't contain her wild smile.

"Well _you_ smell like Alice," he retaliated, squirming out of her hold.

She pouted at him, pulling her knees up to hug her chest. "It's not _my_ fault that girl wears more perfume than a flower. She ought to have a stink bug dæmon." Pantalaimon laughed and opened his tiny muzzle to speak, but a shout from below bounced up before he could start.

"Lyra Silvertongue!" Lyra flinched and felt her heart drop. It was Dame Hannah, standing like a little doll on the grass below. The marmoset clinging to her jacket was clearly visible even from that height, and his humanoid face stared up irritably at them. Lyra was afraid to look at his human's face. "Lyra dear, what on _earth_ are you doing up there! Get down before you soil your skirt!"

Lyra scrambled up at once, her heart roaring to life in her ears, and Pantalaimon was at her shoulder immediately. "I'm sorry," she shouted down, fumbling over herself. Her face burned; she was suddenly ashamed.

"Be _careful_, Lyra!" Dame Hannah cautioned, reeling in fear for her teetering charge. "Don't you have a class soon? I can't _believe_ you would—"

"Dame Hannah, I came here to study alethiometry, not the history of European affairs," Lyra groaned, hardly concealing her distaste. The Dame stiffened in the corner of Lyra's eye, but she climbed through her window and missed the full force of the woman's fury.

"_That_ was brilliant," said Pantalaimon, rolling his beady eyes.

"Oh, hush-up-with-you," Lyra quipped, rushing out the door.

She flew down the corridor, but Dame Hannah met her at the stairs. The woman's wrinkled face was pulled taut with anger, and Lyra shied away from her burning eyes. She knew what was coming.

"Lyra, if you expect to learn the alethiometer from me, I expect you to take your other studies seriously. I don't care whether or not you take kindly to history—you will study all of your required courses if you intend to delve deeper into other fields of study, _including_ the alethiometer. Alethiometry is not a subject to explore on a whim! Many people spend lifetimes learning its secrets and _still_ cannot read it without libraries of books.

"You will learn proper English grammar, arithmetic, atomcraft, and whatever else is required of you. These skills, every one of them, will help you better understand what the alethiometer is trying to tell you. You _must_ take these classes seriously. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly."

Lyra felt her heart jump into her throat; this was her worst fear. She hated being a disappointment, and, though her single word may not have convinced Dame Hannah, she resolved never to let it happen again.

Dame Hannah watched Lyra warily, searching her face. At length she sighed and dropped her hands. "Do you have another class soon?"

"Not for a while." Lyra kept quiet, her eyes fixed to the floor.

"Very well. Run along now, and I never want to see you up there again."

"Yes, ma'am."

Lyra wasted no time scurrying away from her superior. A light flashed on in her head, and she suddenly realized that she had somewhere to escape _to_. Lyra banked right, out of her dorm and into the crisp open air.

"Where are you going?" Pantalaimon asked anxiously. Lyra didn't answer him, but looked straight ahead and ran quickly over the grounds. She headed toward the adjacent building, trying to remember which direction to turn. The outside of this building was identical to Lyra's dorm—no surprise there—and the interior appeared very similar as well. Pantalaimon dropped into her arms, and she held him close as she wandered past the rooms.

"You're going to meet _them_, aren't you?" Pantalaimon grunted. "I thought we were going to conveniently 'forget' about them and watch the stars tonight instead."

"No, we're definitely going. _You're_ the one who keeps telling me it's the right thing to do, that I need to make more friends," she pointed out with a smirk.

"You could do better than them," he muttered hotly, crawling up her blouse.

When she arrived at the room, quivering in anxiety, she rapped lightly at the door. In the few seconds that followed, she tugged at her green blouse, straightened her knee-length skirt. Pantalaimon lifted a windblown lock of hair from her face, muttering something about being presentable, and settled around her neck with a grumble.

"Lyra, your hair is too _long_," he mewed in his sweet voice, pushing the hair off her shoulders with a contempt huff. My, aren't we grumpy today, she thought with a sigh. She pulled her fair hair into a knot behind her head, just as the door before them opened. Lyra dropped her hands and smiled weakly at the heart-shaped face of the stranger peering out at her.

"Hullo," the girl sang, extending a hand. "My name is Susan. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Lyra Silvertongue!"

"The pleasure is mine," Lyra returned politely, masking her disdain. She took Susan's hand and shook firmly, studying her face. Susan looked cordial enough, definitely likeable. Her hair was long, straight, and darkish, but her eyes were light, smiling, and green. The dæmon waddling forward behind her was a strange red-eyed duck. His puffed chest was a sleek maroon which faded into specks of cream, and the tips of his folded, tan wings were metallic blue. His orange bill twisted up to look at her, and she noticed the lovely crest of emerald feathers slicked behind his head. The sections of color on his body were outlined in long white bands.

"He's a Wood Duck," Pantalaimon told her.

"Well, come on inside!" Susan said warmly, opening the door wider to allow the guests to enter. Alice caught sight of Lyra immediately and excitedly popped up.

"Hello, Lyra!" she exclaimed, acting as though she'd known Lyra her entire life. Lyra smiled uncomfortably and glanced around at the strangers in the room. "Well," Alice began, scanning the room now too, "The girl sitting on the bed over there—that's Clara and Simeon, her deer dæmon. You've met her before. And the other girl is Emily. Her dæmon settled as a Killdeer."

Lyra nodded to each of them, storing their names away in her memory. Clara the fair deer-girl would be easy to remember, but Emily was plain. She'd surely forget Emily by tomorrow.

Lyra noticed that Alice was still speaking and flushed, stammering, "Wait, who is _she_?"—meaning the last girl who stood by the hanging wardrobe against the far wall. The girls laughed, and told her the name of the final addition to the party. Her name was Evelyn Ackerman, and she smiled shyly at everyone. It took Lyra a while to find her dæmon. Pantalaimon was the first to spot him, and when he saw the spider clinging to the girl's shirt, Lyra felt herself shiver involuntarily. Evelyn's dæmon had taken the form of a large, hairy spider—a tarantula—with thick, tan legs.

Lyra forced herself to peel her eyes off of the enormous spider as his human approached, and Lyra shook Evelyn's hand warmly. Pantalaimon paced on her shoulder, watching the calm tarantula warily.

"Her name is Lurianne," Evelyn offered when Lyra's eyes strayed to the spider dæmon once more. Lyra blushed, trying hard not to stare, and Pantalaimon paused to glance at the dæmon once more. It was unusual for a person's dæmon to be the same gender as its human, and Lyra's heart fluttered with horrific awe as she remembered her gyptian friend whose dæmon also shared his gender.

"This is Pantalaimon," Lyra said, addressing everyone else now. Pantalaimon silently bowed his head to acknowledge the girls before ducking into Lyra's shirt.

"Shy, isn't she?" Lyra heard someone whisper. She felt Pantalaimon's claws dig into her stomach.

"So." Alice clapped her hands together, gliding to the center of the room to take charge. The door closed with a click, and Lyra shrank against the nearest wall. "Should we wait for Victoria or go on without her?"

"Oh, she can find the way easy," said Clara from the bed. Her deer dæmon stood as if to leave.

"But she _hates_ it when we leave her behind," the plain girl—Emily?—protested in a whiny moan. "I'm staying here."

"Are we—where are we going?" Lyra piped up from her corner, clutching Pantalaimon through her shirt. "I thought we were just…hanging out here."

Susan, the girl who had opened the door for Lyra, folded her arms and glared at Alice. "You didn't tell her we were leaving?" Alice shrugged innocently, and Susan moved to Lyra's side. "No wonder she's not dressed right! Lyra, you're going to freeze out there." Susan lifted a deep jacket from the hanging wardrobe and wrapped it over Lyra's shoulders.

"Out where?" Lyra asked warily.

"In the woods, of course!" Susan answered with a smile.

Pantalaimon's head emerged from the neck of her blouse, his ears perking up.

"There's this one spot," Clara the deer-girl said, her brown eyes bulging in excitement, "a clearing in the woods—not that far, don't worry—where the trees disappear into a green field of flowers and stars—just gorgeous! You ought to smell that heliotrope in the moonlight—breathtaking! And the bobwhites usually come out, and they sing and sing. You'll love it!"

"And," Emily added, "we're all very interested in hearing…you know, about your adventures." Pantalaimon cagily pulled his head back into Lyra's shirt. Emily continued on, ignoring Lyra's obvious discomfort. "Alice and Clara said you met witches, and the Bear King…"

"Or," Susan interjected, to Lyra's intense relief, "we could introduce you more to St. Sophia's. Tell _you_ some stories, or all the little quirks some teachers have. As soon as Victoria arrives, we'll head out." She smiled warmly at Lyra, and at once she felt a profound sense of liberation.

"I should like that very much," Lyra said.

"Then it's settled." Susan spoke with such decisiveness that none of the girls would argue against it.

And that was that.

As though she'd heard the decision settled on, a spruce young woman burst through the door. A stillness came over everyone, and Lyra noticed immediately how the mood had shifted. She seemed to instantly dominate the room, and her canine dæmon was no exception. He padded in mightily as a stiff coyote, his head held high and his ears erect. Some of the dæmons—Susan's especially—flinched in annoyance or fear, except for the Killdeer, Emily's plover, who glided swiftly on his stilt-like legs to meet the new arrival.

"She must be Victoria," Pantalaimon whispered.

Her ferocious eyes flashed at him, and Lyra scowled in return. The expression in Victoria's eyes mirrored the powerful dislike suddenly visible in Lyra's, and the coyote dæmon circled around the room once, pacing slower as he passed the fair girl and her pine marten dæmon.

"You're _Lyra_." It was a statement, not a question, for Victoria had no doubt whatsoever. She spat out the name like a disease, and Lyra felt a heat rise in her cheeks. "Who invited _you_ here?"

"I did, of course," Alice replied, standing again. Victoria frowned, but didn't lash out like Lyra half expected. "She's actually very nice, I'll have you know."

Before Victoria could respond, Susan's duck dæmon stood. "Let's hurry and go," said his human, who rose now as well. "Soon it will be too late to stay out very long." Her dæmon ruffled his wings and waddled toward the door.

Victoria nodded her head, as if giving her permission, and the others poured out of the room, towing Lyra along into the hall.

Later, Lyra would think back to this day and wish she had listened to Pantalaimon. If only she had watched the stars! But Lyra embarked on this journey, and, though indirectly, it altered her life more than anyone could have dreamed.


	4. Woods

**Chapter 3: Woods**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T (for later chapters)

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

The clearing was picturesque, something infinitely more beautiful than Lyra thought possible in the dark, overbearing woods.

When the girls arrived, they seemed at home. They took familiar places, sat relaxed in the grass. Their dæmons ran about, eased onto their humans' knees, or soared into the air to join the stars. The clearing was just about the size of a living room, or, Lyra thought with a smile, the Retiring Room in Jordan College. Large enough and small enough that, no matter where a human being stood, a dæmon could bound over the grass and always be close enough to its human not to stretch that intimate bond between them.

The night passed quickly under the glittering stars, and there was hardly any inclination of time in that timeless place. Moon-flowers peeked their blue head above the untamed blades of rich forest-green grass, and the scent emanating from their pedals sent a wild thrill through Lyra's body as she listened to the girls' tales of unruly scholars, sophisticated dinner parties, and epic independent projects. All the while, Lyra drank in the words, dreaming of the alethiometer and its mysterious lull. Pantalaimon thought of it too, and recalled the days when he would shrink into a mouse to get a better glimpse at the intricate symbols. Those symbols held so much meaning, so many layers of understanding. If only they still had that gift! If only they could hear the alethiometer speak again, sink into that enlightening trance…

Victoria remained strangely quiet during the whole ordeal, and offered little words to Lyra. Her dæmon had shrunk down beside her, and he breathed deeply without a glance upward. Emily told Lyra of graduation ceremonies, and Alice had to add in the details that she missed. Lyra nodded, smiled, and returned all the appropriate responses to each word, pushing on the talk. When the night sky had darkened and deepened to near pitch-black, the talk was near an end.

"In fact," Emily continued, her killdeer dæmon gliding around the grass in excitement, "there's a dance at the end of the week!"

"It's a _ball_," Alice corrected hotly, scowling at Emily's mistake.

"Oh, they only _call_ it that," Susan threw in, rolling her green eyes. She turned to Lyra. "It's usually very formal, and men from nearby Oxford colleges come to dance. It's not so important, though some people seem to think it is…"—she threw an accusatory glance at Alice. Her wood duck dæmon, McCager, swished his tail in annoyance and chased the hummingbird dæmon through the grass. Their humans laughed when the little banded killdeer dæmon joined the chase. Though the killdeer and the hummingbird were much quicker than the larger, more awkward duck, he made up for it when he spread his wings and flew faster than them all. Eventually, the hummingbird sought refuge behind the velvety rack of Simeon the white-tailed deer, and they all collapsed laughing in a heap.

Pantalaimon stayed against Lyra's breast, safe and snug against his human. Victoria's dæmon followed suit, uninterested by the display.

"It should still be exciting," Alice said at length, reclining against a tree trunk. "We get to dress in exquisite gowns and break into our special-occasion jewelry—It's like living a dream full of color and flashing silver…"

"And pompous, cumbersome ball gowns," Susan added with a giggle.

Clara, who was leaning against her sandy-tan deer dæmon, leaned back and spoke for the first time:

"Lyra, you came from Jordan College, didn't you?"

The other eyes in the clearing focused on Lyra, and she frowned at the question. Where was this headed? Pantalaimon grunted. Of course the girls couldn't have gone a whole night without questioning Lyra at least once.

"Yes," Lyra answered cautiously, but in the back of her mind she was almost relieved that the interrogation was over her Oxford, not the witches, dimensions, and child-cutters that fascinated everyone else.

"So maybe _you'll _see someone you know there. Did you have a lover back at Jordan College?"

The question was like a blow through her heart, and it left her dizzy and stunned. A little whimsical murmur hummed through the air, and though the clearing was blurred beyond recognition, she could feel the other girls smiling and whispering their anticipation of the answer.

"Lyra, you don't have to answer." It was Pantalaimon, staggering over her lap as though he'd been dealt a physical blow. "Don't…please don't think about him… I already feel the bruise, Lyra. Please don't…"

Will! Oh, Will… The little fruit, his warm hands, the specters, the dead, Kirjava…

"Please, Lyra!"

She saw Tony Markarios hunched in the corner of the fish house, felt the swing of Iorek Byrnison's mighty gait, and she felt the dizzying joy of Will's hands as they touched her soul—her Pantalaimon—as she pressed her fingers into the infinite fur of his soul, his Kirjava, and the intimacy of his _heart_…

"_Stop_!!"

Lyra blinked, and realized that the clearing had fallen still. The girls were staring worriedly—Victoria being the exception, of course—at her, searching her face with concern. What had caused Pantalaimon's mad outbreak? Why was Lyra's face suddenly sallow, her skin glistening with moist sweat?

"If you don't want to talk about it, then don't, by all means," Clara stammered, her chocolatl eyes pleading for forgiveness. "I was only curious. Not many boys come by St. Sophia's, you know. I'm sorry—"

"It's fine," Lyra whispered, her voice too weak to sound genuine. She stood suddenly, hardening her face, fighting away the memories. "What time is it?" Lyra wondered, searching for an excuse to escape. Evelyn offered an approximate time, and Lyra immediately excused herself from them.

It happened so quickly that most of the girls sat as still as stone for some time after Lyra had left, turning over the event many times. Something horrible must have happened, some secret affair or tragic break-up. Why else would Lyra have reacted that way?

The girls pondered this, and fantastic fabrications and stories wove together in their minds to explain the torment of poor Lyra's heart. Except for Victoria, who watched Lyra leave with a grimace and a huff.

* * *

"Lyra! Lyra, wake up…"

Pantalaimon glanced nervously around at the classroom, but no one was paying them a second thought. Sure, they often looked at the new student and her dæmon, but no one seemed to notice the horrible thing that was happening. Pantalaimon saw the professor look at them, but Pan was obviously awake, so Lyra—whose face was buried in her arms—ought to be awake too.

Thank the Authority that the professor didn't look closer!

Pantalaimon smiled weakly and circled anxiously around her head. What to do, what to do? Lyra had fallen asleep, and he mustn't be too obvious but he _must _wake her up! Normal dæmons were asleep while their humans were, and if someone were to notice… He bent to her ear and bit her sharply—wincing at the pain it caused him as well—and at last she bolted upright, wide-eyed.

"Shh-sh," Pan warned, disappearing into her lap. "No one noticed, I think."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Pan," she whispered, glancing around dazedly. "It's just so _hard_ to pay attention…"

"I know," he said. "But you've got to try harder."

Lyra grunted and set her chin on her folded arms, watching the professor with wearied apathy. It was a grammar class, and something that didn't particularly interest the student. If it had been atomcraft, at least she would have been fascinated to some extent, but Lyra knew how to speak properly, so why should more classes be necessary? Couldn't she learn a foreign language instead? At least that might be useful.

She wasn't planning on staying in Brytain and speaking English forever.

In an effort to stay awake, Lyra turned and watched her classmates. In the desk beside her was Evelyn (she quickly looked away when the tarantula dæmon saw her), and in her front was a strange girl named Lacretia, whose dæmon had settled as a frightening grasshopper mouse. Pantalaimon hated the vicious little dæmon, but Lyra tried to tolerate Lacretia herself; she was brilliant at grammar and always willing to help share her knowledge with Lyra. She didn't know the other girls in this course with her, except for Emily Corcoran. Emily glanced over her shoulder and saw Lyra, and then her face lit up. The Killdeer glided through the air on his stilt-legs toward their desk, and Pantalaimon (after stealing a look at the professor to ensure they weren't being watched) leapt to the ground and met him halfway.

Lyra watched them speak anxiously, looking up at the professor again, and waited for Pan to return. In a few seconds he did, and he came back with news.

"We're meeting in the woods again tonight," Pantalaimon informed her, excitement lining his long frame. "Everyone will be there except Evelyn, 'cause she has somewhere else to be."

"Oh, 'course," Lyra said, leaning back into her chair. "We'll be there, but this time we're bringing _food_." Pantalaimon smiled and ducked into her lap.

They went to the clearing that night, and the next as well. It was quickly becoming a tradition for Lyra and Pan, but it had always been a tradition for the other girls. Soon the week came to a close, and Lyra was beginning to feel at home there in St. Sophia's college. Of course, right when she began to feel welcomed—right when she was beginning to be accepted into the environment there—is when everything fell apart.

And it began in the woods.

Lyra Silvertongue, in her room early in the night, heard the footsteps approach and turned her eyes to her dæmon. Pantalaimon, who was curled on their cherry-wood desk, basking beneath the light of an anbaric lamp, lifted his head and gazed hard at the door. He faced Lyra and softly whispered, "It's just them."

Lyra was ready at the door before the knock came.

"What is it?" Lyra inquired as she opened the door, trying a smile. Gathered in the hall were Victoria—standing in the far back, glowering as she faced away from Lyra's doorframe—Clara, Emily, Evelyn, and Alice. They seemed surprised at first, but Lyra was more shocked at the sight before her. Lyra sighed, knowing immediately why they had come; they were dolled up—each one of them, excluding Susan who was not present. Even the dæmons' feathers were carefully preened, and their fur was brushed and tame. She felt them scrutinize her own attire—her thin blue blouse and pencil skirt—and frowned. Pantalaimon looked up from the desk.

"Well," Alice grunted, resting her gloved hands on her hips, "aren't you _coming_?"

"To what?"

"To the ball!" a thousand voices chirruped matter-of-factly.

"No," Lyra replied at once, partially closing the door. "I en't dressed—I don't even have anything appropriate to wear—"

"Nonsense, you can borrow something of mine!" Alice encouraged, clasping Lyra's wrist. "Come on, you _must_ go!"

"No!" she said again, drawing deeper into the safety of her room. The girls' faces flashed disappointment, but Lyra thought she saw Victoria grin. "It—crowds make me uncomfortable," she tried, pulling her fair hair out of her face. "Please—go on without me. I'll stay here and work on this novella for Professor Watson's course."

"Lyra, are you sure?" Evelyn asked softly.

"Yeah," she assured them all. "Have fun!"

The girls, who obviously didn't believe her, exchanged skeptical glances with each other before stalking off one-by-one. Eventually, only Cara remained. She was a statue in the soft anbaric light, and though Lyra waited, Clara didn't move. Lyra looked up at her, holding onto the half-closed door, and the white-tailed deer dæmon shifted nervously in his place. When Clara looked up, her deep, rich chocolatl eyes were sparkling.

Lyra swallowed. Something was wrong.

* * *

_Thanks so much for everyone's support! Here is a preview of chapter 4: Stranger._

Lyra felt her entire body jump in alarm, and her heart suddenly lunged in agonized pain and fear. Pantalaimon was an absolute mess, shrieking and sobbing in the tree, on her shoulder, in her arms now. She comforted her dear soul, wide-eyed and troubled to her very core by her dæmon's distress.


	5. Stranger

**Chapter 4: Stranger**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

"It's about the other night, en't it?" Clara asked softly, tilting her head to glance at the floor. "That first night in the clearing…" Clara fell quiet, refusing to look Lyra in the eyes.

Oh. This was about Lyra's _outbreak_. Lyra felt the uneasy silence grow tangible, and Pantalaimon became alert and agitated. "I really am sorry, Lyra," she managed to squeak. "I didn't mean to upset you that night. If I'd have known—"

Lyra laughed, surprising Clara and Pantalaimon both.

"I en't mad at you," she said after glaring at Pantalaimon. "There's no reason to be. You asked an innocent question—and how could you have known that you'd hit a sensitive spot? It's just…_he's_just…something that I don't like to think about. That's all."

"It—what happened with your, em, _friend—_must have been terrible," Clara whispered. "I'm sorry that—"

"Stop it!" Lyra sighed in exasperation. "There's not anything to be sorry for. It wasn't horrible at all. It was wonderful. That's the problem, I suppose."

"Why should that be a problem?"

"Well, I can never see him again," Lyra responded. Immediately her breath stopped, and she reprimanded herself for speaking. What had prompted her to chat so openly about…about _Will_?

"I suppose—Oh, I'm sorry—you don't want talk—" Clara held her breath now too, noticing the pained expression crawling onto Lyra's face.

Lyra Silvertongue felt her heart give a little sigh. She _longed_ to think of him. Her heart _ached_ to hear those stories again. Some things she couldn't speak about—even after so many years—without breaking down. The good times and the bad times alike brought on waves of emotion no less powerful than the day she had lived them. But still she ached to hear those stories again, because those stories and the truth behind them were comforting. It was comforting to think of her adventures and know they were all _true_. Will hadn't been a fantasy, and neither had Iorek Byrnison or Serafina Pekkala or Lee Scoresby or…or…

Why should her thoughts of Will be limited to midsummer's day—one single, miserable day in the year? Why shouldn't she indulge herself in those memories any other day?

"I—I can tell you, if you'd like to hear."

Pantalaimon flinched, and Clara saw the movement clearly.

"If you don't want to, please don't—"

"I want to," Lyra affirmed, trying another smile. "Except, it's sort of private. I can't tell you everything, of course, and I'm sure you wouldn't believe me anyway, but I can tell you…tell you about Will." The audible force of his name seemed to affect Pantalaimon, and the poor dæmon swayed drunkenly on the hardwood surface of the desk. A light clicked on in Lyra's head—a deadly thought emerged, one that occurred to her on a whim as she considered the bustling halls of St. Sophia's. She grinned and looked up at Clara, then exclaimed, "Why, let's go to the clearing! We will have all the privacy in the world there. And it's such a beautiful night."

"Well, I'll have to change!" Clara exclaimed excitedly, her polite demeanor never overbearing. Lyra laughed.

"Right, it'll be pretty difficult to get around in a…" She waved her hand at Clara's full, blue gown in lack of a word to describe the gaudy attire. Clara and Simeon laughed in the same voice, and she clutched at the over-elaborate ruffles of azure. "Are you sure you don't want to go to the dance?" Lyra asked suddenly. "There's still time to catch up to them."

"No," Clara said, flashing her big, brown deer eyes at Lyra again. "Those things are never as good as people think."

Lyra smiled. "Great," she said. "We'll meet you there."

It was only a few minutes later that they—Lyra and her dæmon—set out into the woods. The trees loomed mightily behind their dorm building, opening into wide forests of forbs, foliage, and grasses. It was nearly nine-thirty, and the sky was wonderfully dark. Once they entered the cover of the trees, it was as if light didn't exist at all. Lyra clicked on her anbaric torch and trekked through the darkness down the familiar path to the clearing.

"Lyra, I really don't think we ought to be here," Pantalaimon murmured, flowing behind her on the grass. The girl shrugged and continued, brushing brambles and twigs out of her way as they pressed deeper and deeper into the dark trees. A silky, thin tapestry flashed in the brilliant luminescence of her torch, and the startled marten scurried up his human's shoulder, trembling ferociously.

"Oh Pan!" Lyra sighed teasingly, stooping to press her nose into the intricate pattern that barred their path. "Why, it's only a spider web! There en't anything to be frightened of."

Sure enough, in the center of the glowing web hung a fat orb weaver with streaks of yellow lightning splayed over his thin legs. Lyra's light breath tickled him the tiniest bit, and he very subtly shifted a leg, holding perfectly still in front of the slight girl. Pantalaimon continued to shake behind her, so Lyra straightened up and pranced onward, giving the spider and his home a wide berth. Pantalaimon muttered something—she couldn't quite make out what—and she ignored him. This is just like the wardrobe years ago, she thought (she never let him go for that one); except this time there was nothing at all to worry about, and yet little Pantalaimon was shaking and scolding and would not set still for anything.

Occasionally, Lyra would glimpse up and catch a tiny picture of the enormous, glowing moon. The sky, when visible through the thick boughs overhead, was flawless, translucent black broken up only by glittering stars. Eventually the silence became unbearable, and Pantalaimon could not help but burst out.

"Pan, we've been here before!" Lyra grumbled, pushing further ahead. "What's gotten into you? Besides, we can't head back now. We're already late, and Clara and Simeon will be waiting for us."

Pantalaimon fell silent at once, but shuddered and shook until they reached the little clearing. When Lyra pushed through the last bush, she let out a small gasp and stopped at once, for standing there in her clearing was a strange boy, illuminated by the light of the full moon. Something about him seemed familiar. Hesitantly, she stepped forward, trying to discern the expression on his ethereal face. He was standing straight in the center of the clearing, his gaze focused on Lyra's tall, thin figure, as if he had heard her coming.

Well, she thought, he probably had.

He was bare-chested and sickly, ghostly pale. Lyra's heart cried out for him because he looked so sickly, but at the same time his presence was strong and his posture straight and proper. Any pity she felt for him was immediately overcome by a sense of awe; he was beautiful, breathtaking, and—she had noticed this almost immediately—he bore a striking resemblance to _Will_. His hair was dark, falling just above his eyes, and his jaw was strong, his eyes kind. Granted, he was much taller and older than her picture of Will, but if she had to imagine Will grown up, this was almost exactly what he would look like. And despite his similarity to Will Parry, there was yet another presence of familiarity surrounding him.

Lyra was suddenly lightheaded, and she realized that she had forgotten to breathe. The boy's shoulders shook—he was laughing. His voice was deep and smooth, like dark chocolatl. Lyra felt her heart seize within her chest, and the little bruise that Will had left on her heart ached and faded away as it was overwhelmed by the stunning apparition before her. She blinked, and he was suddenly very close. She gasped again, holding her delicate hands to her mouth. Had _he_ moved to her, or had her feet unconsciously brought _her_ closer to him?

A familiar voice tugged at her attention, like a hum in the back of her mind, and it was Pantalaimon, moaning and whispering in horror in her ear. For what reason, she could hardly guess, because this boy was enchanting and perfectly cordial. She smiled, studying his face. Two things immediately struck her: the bright, unnatural flecks of red in his chocolatl-brown irises and the blood-red specks on his cheeks.

"Oh!" she gasped at once. "Are you hurt?" For Lyra had realized that the dark spots on his cheek _were_ blood. His red-brown eyes—or, brown-red, actually; they seemed to grow a deeper chocolatl every second—smiled at her, and he flashed a wide, perfect set of sparkling teeth.

"Not at all." His voice was glossy and sleek again, melting over her like warm milk. His gleaming eyes flashed at the source of that distant humming—Pantalaimon, of course—and then back to her, and comprehension seemed to dawn on him. "Oh," he murmured, touching his white cheek with a slender hand, "you mean this. I scratched myself on the brambles. I should have brought a naphtha lamp, but I assumed the moon was bright enough; it's clear as day here"—indicating the clearing—"though I could hardly see when the trees hid the moon."

Lyra simply nodded in agreement, wishing he would continue to speak.

His smile suddenly vanished. "Are you looking for something?" he asked seriously, his brown eyes boring into hers. Having him so close unnerved the girl, but she could not break his gaze for anything. She stammered, willing her heart to slow down.

"Well, I have a friend who is supposed to be here," she managed to speak, tucking a piece of her golden hair behind her left ear. "Her name is Clara, and her dæmon, Simeon, settled as a white-tailed deer. I don't suppose—have you seen anyone around?" Pantalaimon's shrill voice grew louder, more distinct and desperate.

"No," the unusual boy answered, beaming down at her. His powerful eyes had captured Lyra's, and they would never let her go. "You are the first person I've seen in these woods." He cocked his head, still smiling at her. "What is your name?"

"Lyra," she breathed, feeling the blood run hot through her face. "And you're—"

"James." The beautiful boy extended a white hand, and Lyra took it. She shuddered at his touch; his skin was cold as ice. He held her fingers too long before releasing them, but his eyes never released hers. "Well," he breathed, his face drawing closer, "if I see your Clara, I will point her in your direction." His face—his lips—were inches away from her now, and Lyra had frozen stock-still, forgotten to breathe, even. He extended a single colorless finger and touched her playfully on the nose, and then his sallow face vanished.

Lyra broke out of her trance just in time to watch his form disappear into the trees.

"Lyra, Lyra, _Lyra_!!"

Lyra felt her entire body jump in alarm, and her heart suddenly lunged in agonized pain and fear. Pantalaimon was an absolute mess, shrieking and sobbing in the tree, on her shoulder, in her arms now. She comforted her dear soul, wide-eyed and troubled to her very core by her dæmon's distress. She stroked his fur, held his frantic heart against her chest, and eventually his sobs became somewhat coherent.

"What, Pan?" she crooned, holding him still. "Pan, dear, what is it?"

"A dæmon! Oh, he—where is Clara?!—that boy, he—where was his dæmon?! He has no _dæmon!_" Lyra felt her heart jump, but she hushed Pantalaimon.

"No, he had a dæmon, he must've. He was perfectly normal like us, so—"

"Did you _see_ her?" Pantalaimon gulped, staring furiously up at his human. "Did _you_ see his dæmon?" Lyra glared at him, swallowing hard.

"No, but I wasn't looking," she answered at length, her brows pulling together. "Maybe she was a bird in one of the trees, or a frog in the grass…" Pantalaimon struggled out of her fingers and clambered onto the grass, refusing to look up at her. Lyra called to him, but still he refused.

"You were too busy looking at _him_," he grunted in disgust. "If you had actually paid any attention to anything _else_, you might have noticed that there weren't even _normal_ animals around, not in the trees or the grass or anything. Not even crickets. Lyra, he _had_ no dæmon."

Lyra frowned at him, shaken by disbelief. She stood quietly for a moment, listening to the forest. The clearing was unnaturally still, but life was slowly returning. A few cicadas chirruped in the distance, and a single hoot issued from a tree. Her little Pan was only jealous. That was all.

She pictured James's pallid face again, and recalled the strange familiarity she had felt with him. His pale body reminded her of Serafina Pekkala, she realized at once. That's what it was. James was like an older, witch-like version of Will. Lyra smiled smugly to herself.

"Maybe he's a witch," Lyra reasoned with her dæmon, folding her arms across her chest victoriously. "I'll bet he has witch powers like we do."

"Boys can't be witches," Pantalaimon pointed out.

"Will has witch powers," she retaliated. "Serafina Pekkala said we'd changed everything, remember?" Pantalaimon turned to her, his face full of sorrowful indignity, and closed his eyes.

"We have witch powers, but I'd never let you go anywhere alone, especially in public." His little marten face was hardened, staring at nothing.

Lyra sighed and dropped her arms, temporarily giving up; they were obviously getting nowhere with this argument. If Pantalaimon was jealous, then he would just have to be jealous. Lyra knew what she saw, and nothing Pantalaimon said could change that. Of course James had a dæmon. It was silly to think otherwise.

Without another spoken word to each other, Lyra and Pantalaimon returned to campus, giving up on Clara and Simeon. But their friends had not returned to the dorm, and they were not in class the next morning.

Clara's body wasn't discovered until much later, and by then it was far too late.


	6. Alethiometer

**Chapter 5: Alethiometer**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T (for later chapters)

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

"Lyra, when did you see Clara Moens last?"

"I told you," Lyra grumbled at the headmistress, staring out the window. "I saw her a few days ago."

The headmistress's face darkened as she frowned deeply, and her Tiger Quoll dæmon leaped onto the desk with a powerful growl, forcibly capturing the girl's attention. Pantalaimon slipped under Lyra's chair, hiding himself behind his human's legs. This interrogation was bigger than Clara; several girls had gone missing during the last few days. Though the faculty and student body hoped for the best, most assumed the worst. "_When_ did you see her? Where did you see her? Lyra, this is important."

"I _know_ that," Lyra cried, turning her own fury at the elder. "Clara is my friend! I'm probably worried more than _you_ are! But I don't know what happened—I saw her by my dorm room, and we were supposed to meet—" The headmistress's eyes widened, and Lyra shrank into her chair. A thick oak desk stood between them, but Lyra felt small against the walls of books and ancient relics. The Quoll paced anxiously, and Pantalaimon—the dear thing—puffed out his chest bravely, trying to seem larger against the intimidating marsupial dæmon.

"Where were you going to meet? Lyra, I shouldn't have to interrogate you. If you want to help Clara, you should tell me everything you possibly—"

"We were just meeting in the woods," she spat, folding her arms across her chest. "But she never showed up, so she must've gone missing before."

"Lyra, the woods!" the woman exclaimed, and her dæmon agilely bounded onto the back of her maroon armchair. "Lordsakes, she may be _lost_ out there—"

"No, she wouldn't be lost," Pantalaimon spoke, and Lyra felt her heart lurch. A person's dæmon only talks to other human beings in rare situations, and why should this be that sort of case? Clara's life may have been at risk, but Lyra was already telling the Dame everything she knew. "She's been there before, with us and other girls, and the clearing en't far at all." All at once, Lyra saw what he was doing, and she gave a spiteful whimper. "No, I think something bad must have happened to her; we saw a boy in the woods without _a dæmon_!" But Pantalaimon didn't finish the statement, because Lyra's fingers caught his muzzle just in time.

"We thought we saw something out there," Lyra cut in quickly, suppressing Pantalaimon as best as she could, "but we en't sure what it was. Maybe it was an animal, or maybe it was a person. I dunno."

"Lyra, let your dæmon speak!" Dame Hannah's marmoset cried sharply from the side. The Dame was supervising the interview of course, and Lyra guiltily let Pantalaimon slip out of her fingers.

"Now, what is it you were saying?" prodded Dame Hannah.

"Only that"—the marten glanced fearfully at Lyra—"we saw something strange in the woods. Except we don't know for sure what it was. It looked like a person, but it was dark…"

Lyra was a good actress, and she managed to appear collected despite the broad, victorious smile that captured her face.

"Well thank you," the headmistress said uncertainly, rising to her feet as her dæmon climbed onto her shoulder. He was almost too big, but he was graceful and balanced enough to seem right at home on the woman's frame. "What you've said will certainly help. I only wish you had spoken sooner; it may be—well, we will search the woods more carefully now. Show Dame Hannah where the clearing may be found, and she will inform the search party. Thank you again, Lyra Silvertongue."

Lyra nodded silently and followed the headmistress to the door. Dame Hannah threw a formative glare in Lyra's direction, and Lyra paused briefly to describe the clearing to her.

"Why didn't you tell them?" Pantalaimon hissed as they walked away. "Why wouldn't you let me talk about _James_?"

"You know 'swell as I do," she said. "I just got a gut feeling, Pan…I just don't think anyone ought to know. _You _didn't say anything either, and you very well could've. Thank you. Sorry for being rough, but I just _couldn't_ let you say anything. He couldn't have done anything to her anyway—we were in that clearing with him! If Clara had been there, he would've told us so."

"I don't get why you trust him so much," muttered Pantalaimon. "You didn't see him like I did. He kept looking at me funny—like I was a joke or a _meal_ or something! Lyra, I don't like him. And he _had no dæmon_!"

"You're unreasonable!"

"You're insufferable."

The pair had reached their dorm room, and Lyra paused to turn the stubborn key. They clambered into the room and collapsed on the springy bed, flinging a jacket at the wall. Pantalaimon slipped into the sheets as Lyra flung her fair head into the pillow, and the ferret-like dæmon snuggled up against her body lovingly.

"I'll bet you anything he's a witch," she murmured into the fabric of her pillowcase. "He sure looked like one." She felt Pantalaimon's warm body slide against her stomach through the sheets, and his head emerged from the comforter.

"You're being unreasonable now," he said. "What makes you think a boy our age could be a witch? Shamans certainly aren't that young… Leastways, not that I know of."

"You don't know anything about shamans."

"Neither do you."

"Will's dad was a shaman," Lyra muttered dreamily. "I don't think we ever met him. That witch killed him too fast for _Will_ to really meet him, didn't she? Well, you're probably right about shamans being older. That's why he's got to be a witch or something. Maybe a witch consul—but I s'pose they don't have witch powers either. There could be a thousand reasons why he can separate—I mean, if he really_ can_ separate—from his dæmon…"

A thought hit them both at the same time, and immediately Lyra climbed out of her bed and ran to the chest drawers. She pulled out the middle one and fumbled through the clothing until she felt the smooth texture of velvet. She drew out the black velvet cloth and returned to her eager dæmon to unwrap the alethiometer.

The sunlight was beginning to fade, and Lyra Silvertongue switched on the anbaric lamp by her nightstand, lying the heavy golden compass on her pillow beside Pantalaimon. He pressed his weasel face into the crystal face of the device and studied each of the familiar archaic symbols—thirty-six of them, lined around the outside face of the compass: an anchor, a baby, an hourglass, a chameleon, a crucible, and many others, each with thousands of interpretations. There were three knobs along the outside of the alethiometer that controlled three shorter needles. The single long needle had no knob to control it, and it swung back and forth erratically without rhythm or meaning whatsoever.

"We can't read it," Pantalaimon reminded her.

"I know that," she said, admiring the familiar intricate molding of the golden compass. "But I'm curious anyway. I guess I don't even know where to start…"

"Dame Hannah would know!" he said excitedly. "We're supposed to start our alethiometer lessons soon anyway—suppose we drop a hint or two and get her to ask the alethiometer about _him_…"

Lyra's eyes sparkled, and she dragged Pantalaimon into her arms. "Yes, Pan!" she cried. "You're brilliant!" Then she added with a triumphant grin, "We'll settle this once and for all."

* * *

Alice caught Lyra's arm as she rushed past. Lyra whirled around and saw Susan walking with her as well.

"What?" Lyra groaned urgently. "I'll be late to my lesson!"

"Cool down," Alice laughed. Susan's Wood Duck clucked in a laugh.

"Do you want to meet us tonight?" Susan asked her, smiling broadly. "We thought we'd go for a chocolatl and study for Professor Watson's exam. What do you say? Seven tonight?"

"All right, that's fine," Lyra agreed. She caught sight of Petri, the ruby-throated hummingbird dæmon of Alice. She noticed him particularly because he was behaving strangely. He twitted nervously around Alice's ear, whispering something to his human. Lyra shrugged it off, running toward Dame Hannah's lecture. "I'll meet you at Alice's room!"

She wasted no time scurrying into the study, and she found the Dame and her marmoset waiting patiently behind a large cherrywood desk.

"Now, Lyra," Dame Hannah began once Lyra had taken a seat. Her dæmon found a small book and brought it to her side. "Before we can even begin to read and question the alethiometer, we must learn each symbol and all of its meanings. In order to fully understand what the alethiometer is trying to tell us, we must know what it is capable of telling us. This simple book contains the names and pictures of all thirty-six symbols. There are countless other books which give details of each symbol, but for now we will familiarize ourselves with the basic names and first meaning of each. Then we will begin studying one symbol at a time—this will take a long time, mind you, but it seems you are ready and willing to begin the steps of that journey."

"Yes," Lyra beamed. "I'll study it a lifetime if that's what it takes."

"It very likely will," Dame Hannah said without smiling.

"Dame Hannah," Lyra said casually, feigning a light conversational tone, "can you show me an example first? Could you ask the alethiometer something…oh, I don't know…about the woods, for example? Just so I can watch you do it." She meant James, of course, and she figured the alethiometer would pick up on that. It was moved by Dust, after all, and Dust is intelligent. It picks up the subtle hints, and sometimes even drops its own. Pantalaimon crawled onto the surface of the table, dragging the golden compass with him.

Dame Hannah eyed her warily. "Lyra, I have already consulted the alethiometer on that subject. It has taken me a considerable amount of time to decipher its meaning, and I still—"

"Well, then you should be able to show me quickly!" Lyra countered anxiously. "If you already know what it's going to tell you, you ought to let me watch you do it again! It'll be faster, right…"

The elderly woman sighed in defeat and unwrapped the alethiometer from its black velvet casing. "Watch the free needle closely," she instructed. "I will try to explain the reasoning as I go…" Lyra watched in glee as the woman moved each of the three needles around the face of the compass, pointing them at the waxing moon, for disappearing; the walled garden, meaning nature or the woods; and the baby, which meant the students. Dame Hannah was asking the alethiometer, asking the Dust, what was happening to the girls in the woods.

Dame Hannah said she had consulted the alethiometer before, but hopefully, Lyra thought, this time the Dust would notice the difference in the question.

Suddenly both the woman and her dæmon became unnaturally still, and the two of them stared at the alethiometer with a blank focus stretched across their features. The long needle began to swing this way, then that way, and every eye in the room followed its movement carefully. Around the face once it went, stopping at the bird and the bread, then stumbling at the serpent on its third way 'round. Lyra tried to slip into that same trance, to allow the alethiometer to speak to her again, but it was no use. Without the knowledge she needed, there was no possible way for the girl to decipher the meaning of the needle's movement.

The needle continued on its way, quickly and steadily moving about the face. Quite suddenly, it accelerated, pausing briefly on the moon, then the Madonna, and finally the skull-topped hourglass. For the first time, the Dame seemed to breathe. She stared at the compass wide-eyed, following the needle with more attention. It had reverted to its continuous movement now, and it flowed rhythmically, in the same pattern as before. Lyra followed its motion closer—it hit the bird and the bread just as before, then twitched at the serpent on its third time past—but this time it stopped at the moon sooner, and immediately sped to the Madonna and hourglass. Was the Dust trying to emphasize these symbols? What did they mean?

Lyra took her eyes off the compass and watched Dame Hannah's face instead, wishing she knew half of the symbols or a few it their meanings. The chameleon—Air, she thought, recalling the incident with the fly-spies. But the needle never stopped at the chameleon. The Madonna could mean mother, right? Was her mother—were the Gobblers—killing the students?

"Don't be stupid," Pantalaimon told her. Then the needle stopped.

"What is it, Dame Hannah?" Lyra asked, noticing that the Dame had emerged from her trance. "What did it say?"

"It said something new this time," she replied, shaking her head. "It was as though… I'm not sure what I did differently. Let me tell you what I knew before: whatever is happening to the students is supernatural, and the girls who are missing are dead." A hush fell over the room for a moment as the news settled on Lyra. Clara was _dead_. Something—someone—had _killed_ her. She shuddered, and Pantalaimon let a little whimper escape. "The alethiometer is cryptic, as I am certain you already know, and not everything it says makes sense. You may have noticed one of the patterns—the needle stopped at the snake the third time around, which points to the third level of meaning, which is evil. Then it stopped at the moon, which is the uncanny, mysterious. The girls are dying by an evil supernatural force.

"And then it becomes more difficult; it stops at the Wild Man, which simply means 'the masculine,' or it could literally mean a 'wild man'. I cannot tell which the alethiometer is trying to convey, except that the needle stops very specifically there, which may mean that it is that first simple meaning. Then it points to the bird and its first meaning, which is the Soul. The last symbol in the sequence is the loaf of bread, which means 'nourishment' or 'sacrifice. I'm unsure about that interpretation as well. Then it returns to the serpent and emphasizes the bird and the bread once again. That must be the critical point, but I cannot possibly describe the culprit to you, Lyra, because half of the things that I _think_ the alethiometer are telling me sound far too absurd to be true. I must be deciphering the symbols incorrectly." She shook her head again, and Lyra strained forward, too eager to hear what she would say next.

"The new thing, Dame Hannah? What did it tell you?"

"The thing—the thing that it told me just now—it said _witch_"—at this, Lyra gave an involuntary gasp of delight—"which must mean that I have misinterpreted the other symbols. Men cannot be witches—but I have no doubt that it was telling me 'witch'. Did you notice the pattern? Madonna, moon, and then the hourglass. The first part meant witch because it said 'mystical female,' which is common for witch. Then it pauses at the hourglass. That either means that a witch is coming, for it always stopped at the skull-topped hourglass directly after it mentioned the witch, or else…" Dame Hannah seemed to concentrate harder, as if trying to remember something critical. "It could have pointed at the hourglass's other critical meaning: death. It may have meant that the witch is causing the deaths."

Pantalaimon stiffened, and Lyra could not guess why.

"That would explain a few other things, though; the alethiometer said strange things about the murderer that I thought meant _dæmon_, and not only that, but that he or she could separate from his or her dæmon, and perhaps it was trying to tell me that she was a witch in that way, because only witches can separate from their dæmons. Except…except, of course, for you dear." Pantalaimon grew even more restless then, and Lyra had to calm him down for the Dame to continue.

But, to Lyra's dismay, the reading demonstration had ended.

"Please, ask it something else! Maybe the _witch_—"

"Lyra," the woman reprimanded. The girl hushed, and Dame Hannah spoke softer. "Now that you have seen it in action, perhaps you will be even more eager to begin your studies." Lyra bowed her head, and Dame Hannah pushed the alethiometer toward her. "Let's familiarize ourselves with the symbols first…"

The rest of the lesson seemed unimportant compared to those first minutes. Lyra was distracted the rest of the time, dreaming and pondering the interpretations Dame Hannah had told her. She had been right all along, she thought with a smug grin. James _was_ a witch! He could separate from his dæmon. And of course, when the compass needle stopped at the hourglass it meant to say that he was already here. The hourglass could also mean "now", couldn't it? Or maybe—Lyra's heart jumped—the skull hourglass meant that he was in danger! That he would be the next victim!

Pantalaimon couldn't bear it any longer. He scrambled to Lyra's shoulder and whispered shrilly, "It's not James, Lyra! It's _us_!"

Dame Hannah's marmoset dæmon scrutinized them intently, but Lyra's heart fluttered so anxiously that she had to respond.

"What do you mean?"

"The alethiometer meant us! The witch—the 'mystical female'—that meant us! We have witch powers! The skull-topped hourglass wasn't saying that James is going to die—it was trying to tell us that we're causing the deaths!"

"Pan, how? That's absurd!"

"It must be true! This all started happening whenever we showed up—it's what all the girls think!"

"_You _don't honestly believe—_What_?!"

"Lyra, pay attention!" It was the marmoset dæmon, and Dame Hannah's face flashed a frown at them.

"If you have something more important to discuss, please wait until after your lessons are finished," Dame Hannah growled. "You were more excited about Alethiometry than anything else in the world only a moment ago. If you'd like, I will postpone this class until next week."

"No, no," Lyra begged, her focus returned to the task at hand. "Please continue. We'll talk later," she muttered, half to Pantalaimon and half to the scholar before her.

The rest of the lesson was a blur, for Lyra could only sit motionless and turn over Pantalaimon's words in her head. Pantalaimon lay quietly on her lap, sensing the working gears in his human's mind. The girls suspected _her_! Those stupid, idiotic traitors… But then, Lyra was the girl from the north. She was the friend of armored bears and witches, and the lover of a boy from another world.

Perhaps their suspicions were well placed.


	7. Missing

**Chapter 6: Missing**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T (for later chapters)

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

"Pantalaimon, what on earth do you mean?"

Lyra's tone was as ferocious as her face.

"Just what I said," the marten grumbled, prancing along the top of the hanging wardrobe. "The girls think _we've_ been making people disappear. Or else they think that we—well, they think all this has _something _to do with us."

"We en't been killing nobody!"

Pantalaimon rolled his eyes.

"Of course, Lyra. But there's all sorts of awful rumors floating around. They think you're a witch and I lure peoples' dæmons into the woods. They think we're turning 'em into mayflies or toads, and sometimes they say we kill 'em."

Lyra was pacing furiously, like a caged tiger circling its enclosure. She stopped at the wardrobe, radiating fury, and met Pantalaimon's eyes.

"Why Pan, that's the stupidest thing—"

"Well we are witches, aren't we?" he giggled. Lyra scowled at him. "What? It's _true_, in a way. Lyra, you'll wear a hole in the floor!"

"How come I haven't heard anything?" she growled, pausing by the window.

"It's their dæmons that say it," he said, bounding onto the bed from the wardrobe. "They whisper things when they think I can't hear 'em. They were wrong, all right. I heard every word." He spread out on the sheets in front of her, below the window, and rolled onto his back. He snuggled playfully into the sheets, but righted himself when he saw Lyra's unchanged face. "Come on, Lyra… Cheer up."

"I can't cheer up," she muttered, glaring at the windowpane. "My friends are traitors."

"Not all of them," Pantalaimon said, reaching out to touch her hand with his nose. "Just Victoria, Lacretia, and Alice—"

"Alice!" Lyra gasped in disgust.

"Well they've got reason to mistrust us," her dæmon continued. "People only started disappearing after we showed up. And you remember all the things people said about us _before_ we came along…"

"I suppose you're right," she admitted, falling onto the bed in defeat.

They were silent for a moment, sharing in the unbroken strains of thought that flitted through the air. Lyra kicked off her sandals and crawled under the sheets. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and Pantalaimon curled around her neck in his favorite sleeping position.

"Pan," she whispered without opening her eyes. "What do you think the alethiometer meant? What were those symbols…?"

"The Madonna, the moon, and the hourgla—"

"No, no… The _other_ ones."

Pantalaimon scrunched his nose in concentration, trying to recall… "The serpent, the bird, and the bread," he recited at length. "Dunno what they mean. The serpent meant evil or sommat like that. The bird means soul, right?"

"That's what Dame Hannah said," Lyra muttered.

"So maybe it's an evil spirit," he concluded.

"But what does the bread mean?"

"She said it symbolized food. Or sacrifice. Maybe someone's sacrificing the girls to an evil spirit…"

"That's silly, Pan," she giggled drowsily.

"I've seen sillier things," he replied.

Lyra reached over and switched off their anbaric lamp, but she still couldn't slip into slumber. Her mind was too fretful, and eventually she had to speak. "Pan, you don't really believe the alethiometer was talking about us, do you?" Pantalaimon grumbled something and rolled over.

"I don't know what to think, Lyra," he answered. "Maybe you're right and it was talking about James being in trouble. Or maybe it was trying to tell us something else. We en't scholars, and we sure can't read the alethiometer. If Dame Hannah can't even figure it out…"

"Then _we_ prob'ly can't do better…" Lyra finished for him, and then they drifted into sleep.

But Lyra's night was interrupted by dream after dream of _James_, and every image of his face popped into Pantalaimon's mind as well. Though they shared the same dreams, every dream of Lyra's was a nightghast to poor Pantalaimon. Time and time again he awoke shrieking as James's ghostly face appeared, and it was a wonder his restlessness didn't wake his human. Normally it would have, for dæmons cannot be conscious while their humans are not, but it was different with Lyra and Pantalaimon. Their bond had been stretched like a witch's, so, like a witch, Lyra would hardly stir while Pantalaimon woke with a start every other hour.

So Lyra settled into deeper dreams, and James waited for her. There he was, pale and beautiful in the clearing. He caught sight of Lyra and smiled warmly, and Lyra smiled back. But before she could move to him, a shadow moved. It was a Wildman, the shadow of a Wildman, snarling, ruthless. She heard a scream, and it was Clara with a knife through her heart. Lyra tried to run to her, but her legs were locked in an invisible trap, glued in place.

She could only watch helplessly as Clara's deer dæmon vanished into the air.

Then a sickening thought hit her, and she screamed madly. James! The shadow was at James's throat, and his chocolatl eyes beckoned to her, begged and pleaded for help. The shadow morphed and laughed wildly, but it was the harsh laugh of a female, and Victoria's fiery eyes burned through the shroud. Lyra screamed. James would die! The skull-topped hourglass appeared like an omen in the stars above her; she was in the clearing now, and he stretched out his arm for her. She shrieked his name, reached for his hand, but the Wildman was there, and the white canvas of James's skin was splattered with sticky crimson.

In her bed, Lyra's unconscious body shivered, and Pantalaimon woke with a start.

He heard a lot of the hours struck off that night, and Lyra awoke the next morning with a miserable sigh.

"You're disgusting," he grunted sleepily.

"Oh Pan, he's in trouble…" she moaned as the alethiometer's symbols rushed through her mind. "He's the next victim…"

That morning's round of classes went by as a blur. Lyra noticed for the first time how girls glanced away from her, how their dæmons whispered into their ears as Lyra passed. Pantalaimon was right! They were all afraid of her. She might as well have been a spectre or a Tartar.

She passed a cluster of girls locked deep in a conversation.

"I haven't seen her all morning!" one of them whispered desperately as her Lark dæmon fluttered over her head in distress. "I think she's been _taken_…"

At once the group was aware of Lyra's presence, and they watched her incredulously as she hurried past. Lyra felt a stone grow in her stomach, heavy and sharp as obsidian. She could feel their eyes burrow into her back as she continued, and then the whispering picked up again, louder than before.

"Someone ought to _do_ something about _her_!" Lyra heard the Lark-girl cry. "Before you know it she'll have gotten everyone in the school!"

"Don't listen to them, Lyra," Pantalaimon growled. "Not everyone thinks you're to blame."

Lyra didn't say a word.

She spotted a group of her friends (with a pang, she almost regretted calling them "friends") crowded on a bench before her. She hurried toward them, aware of the new attention, and broke into the circle.

"Lyra!" said a startled Alice. "There you are! I was worried about you."

"Duplicitous snake," Pantalaimon muttered to his human.

"What's going on?" Lyra asked, seething with edginess. These were her friends! And they believed that she was capable of…of murder!

"Haven't you heard?" Evelyn whispered. Her tarantula's mood was impossible to read, but her voice dripped with despondency. "It's Samantha! You know, from botany. She's disappeared now."

"This is awful!" Susan cried. "I can't believe what's happening… Soon they won't allow us to go outside at all!"

"But she was taken from her room," Evelyn whispered again (her voice was always an airy whisper), her eyes bulging. The other girls whirled on her in horror. "Her roommate went to sleep at the same time, and she woke up in the middle of the night by screaming! It was Samantha's magpie dæmon. But Samantha had vanished right out of her own room, and they still haven't found her."

"If none of the bodies have turned up, they might still be alive," Alice reasoned. Lyra shook her head mournfully, and Pantalaimon's ears shrank against his head.

"No," Lyra moaned. "They're all dead." Every face stared at her in terror. Her cheeks rushed with fiery blood as she realized the conclusion they'd drawn, and she struggled to make an audible sound. "No—I—Dame Hannah read the alethiometer, and it told us the girls were dying." _Really_, Lyra thought fervently. _How can you all believe it's me?!_

"Yes, and the alethiometer was a great help predicting Samantha's death, wasn't it? Did it tell you Clara would die too?" Victoria was snarling, and her coyote's eyes were on fire. Lyra stiffened, and her vivid dream came back to her in a rush. "Come on, Lyra. You know what's going on, don't you? Maybe your bear friends stopped by for a snack. Or maybe those Gobblers have gotten back to snatching kids—"

"Stop!" Lyra bellowed. "You don't know _anything_ about that!"

"Why don't you tell us, then?" she growled, folding her arms with a powerful glare. Her face was stone, untouched by any emotion besides the hatred that emanated from her lithe body. "Why won't you tell us about yourself?"

"It's personal," Lyra snarled through clenched teeth.

"Of course it is," Victoria said coolly. "If _I_ were a witch, I'd certainly keep it to myself…"

"Victoria, stop it," Susan said, sounding more like a mother than Mrs. Coulter ever had. "You know Lyra's not…I'm sorry, Lyra." The coyote eyed the Wood Duck warily, and the little marsh bird took a few waddling steps toward the protection of Susan's body.

Lyra couldn't find her voice, though. Her head was spinning from the adrenaline and the disgust; all her fears were confirmed. Even her friends were divided against her. She looked helplessly around at the faces: Alice's pout and her hummingbird dæmon's sudden stillness, Victoria Halbert's unrelenting glare, Emily's stern frown and her folded arms. Lyra took a step back, but she felt a hand hold her in place. It was Evelyn.

Up close, the tarantula was even more horrifying. Her bulging chelicerata, tipped with thin, black fangs, danced threateningly, and the two black eyes on her head were menacingly vacant. But then Lyra noticed the metallic sheen on her back, the flashing rose-pink, and the beautiful shimmer of hair. It was—Lyra was shocked to admit this—_beautiful_. Lyra and Pantalaimon looked up at Evelyn with newfound awe.

"We'd better get to class," was all Evelyn said. Susan silently agreed, and the two of them dragged Lyra away from the snarling coyote's presence. Victoria watched them leave warily before turning to Alice and Emily with a smirk.

"They've taken _her_ side," Victoria grunted, and Emily seemed just as disgusted.

"We don't know it's Lyra for sure," Alice reminded them. "She may be all right…"

"But she may _not_ be," Victoria replied coolly. "For all we know, she only _thinks_ she's innocent. Suppose a witch clan followed her here. Suppose she _is_ a witch." Emily's plover agreed with a _cree cree_, and he jumped into the air to watch the blonde girl who had once been a friend.

Pantalaimon spotted the Killdeer and growled. The grumble would have amused Lyra (Pantalaimon, despite his efforts, was not as quite as menacing as he thought), except that the powerful dislike rumbled in her own heart as well. Evelyn's hand wrapped around Lyra's wrist.

"It's all right, calm down," she whispered. Susan smiled apologetically and opened the door for them.

"It's _not_ all right!" Lyra moaned. "They think I'm a murderer!"

"The only reason Emily thinks all that is because _Victoria_ thinks it. She may as well be Victoria's dæmon," she added with a light giggle. Evelyn's voice seemed to possess some musical quality, and the quiet laugh calmed Pantalaimon. Lyra, for her life, couldn't take her eyes off Lurianne. The dæmon was such a curiosity, and now that Lyra had realized the depth to its stolid exterior, she longed to uncover its other secrets.

McCager's quack forced them all to look up.

A bulletin had been posted on the door to their classroom, written in the scribbled hand that they all recognized as the Professor's. Lyra took a sharp breath as she scanned the page.

_Dear students,_

_Due to the recent occurrences, all classes today have been cancelled. Do accept my sincere apologies, though you all may be relieved not to have to worry about studying further for the upcoming test. Please return to your dorm buildings, as this is the wish of the Headmistress. _

_Sincerely,_

_Professor Watson_

A voice cleared her throat behind them, as if to enforce the bulletin.

"Girls, what are you doing outside of your dorms?" said Madame Cooney.

"Sorry, miss," Lyra whispered. "We didn't realize we were supposed to be there."

"Well now ya know," she said, glancing around at the other two. "And now I expec' ya to return there and stay there. The faculty is makin' rounds, and if we see any of you students runnin' about, we won' show any mercy, ya hear? Now get."

They all muttered "yes ma'am," and scurried away with heavy hearts. When would this end?

Lyra's head spun. Whatever was doing this was moving fast. This was becoming ridiculous. Obviously the culprit had no intention of leaving, what with so much easy prey. Stealing girls right out of their bedrooms! Why, if that was so simple, then surely James was already dead! Or he would be very soon. That idea hit Lyra hard, but her sudden helplessness was replaced by a growing sense of responsibility. Lyra was the daughter of Lord Asriel, wasn't she? She had saved the dead ghosts of every world and freed the children from the General Oblation Board and its child-cutting machine. Surely Lyra Silvertongue could save her fellow classmates from this monster.

Surely she could save James, if it wasn't already too late.

"I suppose we'll see you later, Lyra," Susan muttered, banking right toward her dorm building while Lyra continued ahead. Evelyn was her roommate, so she turned as well.

"I'll see you later," Lyra returned. "If they ever let us outside again."

The girls smiled and vanished through the door. Lyra's dæmon shifted on her shoulder, and she felt his nose press against her cheek.

"What are we going to do?" Pantalaimon asked.

"We're going to prove it's not us," she responded hotly, power-walking toward her dorm.

"How are we going to do that?" His voice was skeptical, edgy. She glanced down at him with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm going into the woods," she said matter-of-factly. Pantalaimon almost had a seizure.

"I won't let you!" he cried at once, stiffening like a log. "Lyra, you're _not_ going back there!"

"I have to," she told him, and he knew that he couldn't change her mind. "I need to warn James. This must be getting serious if they won't even let us go to class anymore, and if he's still out there he could get hurt, or he may be dead already!"

"I _especially_ won't let you go back there for _him_. Lyra, how do you know _he's_ not the one doing this?"

"Why do you think he _is_?"

Pantalaimon's fur bristled, but he could find no words to respond.

"There," she grunted victoriously, turning toward their building to Pantalaimon's relief. She smiled crookedly at him. "Oh, don't you get all smug. I'm still going to the woods, just you wait."

A gust of wind shook the trees, and Pantalaimon gave a little gasp. A figure stood against the trunk of a sycamore, a smirk scarring his pale face. But the moment Pantalaimon thought that he saw it, the apparition had vanished, and in its place was only the gnarled trunk of an ancient tree. He turned against Lyra's neck and whimpered, blaming his madness on his lack of sleep. For this hadn't been the first time James's face had appeared outside of the nightghasts. It hadn't been the first time that James's face had suddenly appeared in the mirror, or James's figure against a tree had emerged to stare at his dear Lyra.

But not once had Lyra seen it, so it must have only been the fizzled imagination of the marten dæmon playing tricks on his weary mind.


	8. Witch

**Chapter 7: Witch**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T (for later chapters)

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

It was early in the morning, and Lyra wasn't about to waste any time.

Pantalaimon watched her dismally as she packed a rucksack with a roll of bread and some jam. He almost suggested throwing an apple in there, but he caught himself. He wasn't going to help her get on with this madness. From his perch on the wardrobe (a place that was quickly becoming his familiar spot), he could see his human working and still keep out of her reach. She glanced up at him and smiled, but he didn't return the favor.

"Pan, when will you come down?" she sighed.

"Not ever, Lyra," he said stubbornly, drawing himself closer to the polished wood. "I'm _not_ going to the woods."

"Well I _am_," she said.

"Then you're going alone."

Lyra pretended not to care, but somewhere in her heart she felt a sharp kick.

"You're letting me go off alone?" she murmured at length.

Pan shifted, but he held onto his resolve. "Not letting you. It's your choice to go off there, but I'm _not_ coming. So there. If you want to run off alone…"

The word "alone" hit her hard in the stomach, but she continued to tie her lunch. Human beings weren't meant to be alone, she knew painfully. That's why they were created with dæmons. To have her Pan leave her, or rather, for her to leave _him_…

"I've got to."

"No, you don't," he said. "You don't have to do anything. It's not our responsibility to help everyone."

"But if we _can_—"

"We can't!" he moaned. "What if you do find the murderer out there? What're you going to do? He'll probably just kill you right there without a thought, and that's not going to help us!"

Lyra stood hotly and stomped toward the door. "Bye, Pan," she grunted, pushing herself into the hall. Pantalaimon nearly stood and scrambled after her right then, but he stopped himself. He was as stubborn as she, after all.

Lyra slunk down the stairs and peered around the corner. Not a scholar was in sight, so the girl ran out of the main entrance and made a run for the woods. She felt utterly naked without her dæmon, and she didn't look back until she was sheltered beneath the shade of the boughs. She glanced over the windows and sidewalks, but she was almost certain she hadn't been spotted. With that assurance, she turned toward the shadowy trunks and crept into the forest.

Beyond the edge of the school grounds, Lyra began to question her decision. Had Pan been right to stay behind? But she had to warn James. She had to try and save him.

The clearing came to mind; that had been her original plan. She tore off toward that direction, past twisted trees and over mossy rocks. The trees blocked the sun almost entirely, and as she crunched through the leaf litter in the twilight, she felt a shiver run through her. A twig snapped behind her, and she bravely turned to face the noise.

"James?" she asked the half-light. Not a sound responded.

The further she came into the woods, the more she realized how still it was. She hadn't seen a squirrel or chipmunk since she'd left the grounds. No birds sang in the trees. The alethiometer had said it was supernatural, and Lyra began to feel edgy. But she was the daughter of Lord Asriel. She was Lyra Silvertongue. So she didn't head back while she had a chance, but continued on. If anything, this lack of life meant that finding James was an even more pressing matter. There really was something horrible out here, and she had to save him.

But she was alone, without her Pan to help her. She missed Pan's reassurance even more than she missed the sunlight.

Deeper in the woods, she realized that she had missed the clearing. She spun around, widening her eyes through the darkness. "James?" she shouted, and thought how her Pan would tell her to keep quiet. "James?" she whispered this time, and turned to the left.

_Crunch crunch_ sang her feet, and her mind turned like clockwork. The bird and the bread. The serpent. Sacrifice evil, evil soul, evil spirit, spirit nourishment, soul sacrifice… Dame Hannah said that's what the symbols meant: soul, nourishment or sacrifice, and evil. What did it mean? What was traipsing about in these woods alongside her? What had taken Samantha out of her room?

What was the alethiometer trying to say?

Sunlight flooded her eyes, and in her blindness she heard a sharp crackle nearby. "James?" she asked, but it was not him, and blindly she scrambled to run, tripping over her boots, falling into the grass. The rumbling drew nearer, and she screamed.

"Lyra, it's only me!"

Her heart fluttered into her chest.

"Pantalaimon, what on _earth_," she panted angrily. "You gave me such a turn!! I—" Lyra sat upright and seized Pan, holding her dear dæmon against her chest. "I thought you didn't _care_…"

"Oh Lyra, how could I ever not care about you?" he whispered, shaking. "I love you, you know that…"

"What happened to staying out of the woods?"

"I couldn't let you come out here alone…" Lyra beamed at him, he beamed at her, and the two took a moment to glance around them. They were in their clearing, and James was nowhere to be found.

"Shall we break open our lunch now?" she asked, plucking up her rucksack from the grass.

"Can we go back to our room first?" he pleaded with a nervous giggle. "He must be gone already, so let's go…"

"Yeah, okay," Lyra murmured, standing up. "This place gives me the creeps anyway."

* * *

The bird, the bread, and the serpent.

"What does it mean, Pan?" Lyra wondered aloud for what might have been the thousandth time.

"I _don't know_," Pantalaimon grunted (for the thousandth time). They were lying on the hardwood floor of their dorm room, locked safely inside. Lyra was scribbling out an essay while her dæmon (what help he was!) slept with his head on her paper. "You spelt that wrong," he murmured, opening one eye sleepily. "It's _anbarometric_, not _anbarometeric_."

"Oh, hush," she sighed, nudging him playfully. "I'm distracted."

A trumpet at their window ripped away their concentration. Lyra scrambled to the window, abandoning her assignment without hesitation, and there on the shingles waited a patient goose with pale purple rings circling his intense eyes. But it was no goose, she knew immediately. It was a dæmon. Lyra swung open the window, and out bounded Pantalaimon.

"Kaisa!" he shouted gleefully. The dæmon nodded his head, and Lyra stood back respectfully to allow the dæmon to enter. The goose dæmon would have unnerved any other human at the college; to see a dæmon without his human was like seeing a person's mind flying naked without a body—worse than seeing a headless person. But Kaisa was the dæmon of a witch—and not just any witch, but Serafina Pekkala, the clan queen of the Lake Enara witches and dear friend of Lyra and Pantalaimon.

The goose gracefully waddled through the open window and swooped to the middle of Lyra's floor with a mighty flap of his broad wings. Lyra would not touch the dæmon of course—the code for human-dæmon etiquette still ran deep through her veins, and a witch's dæmon was no exception to that deep-set rule—so she stood back politely out of the way as Pantalaimon rushed to his side.

"It is a great honor to see you again, Lyra," the goose said, turning his coal-black eyes to her. "I was not expecting to meet you as I set out on this journey, but I am glad our paths have crossed again."

"Oh Kaisa, I've missed you!" Lyra exclaimed, smiling uncontrollably. "How is the clan? Oh—where are my manners—"

"Why are you here, Kaisa?" Pantalaimon interrupted for her, bubbling over with curiosity. The goose waddled forward, looking keenly around at the small dorm room.

"I was sent here by my witch"—meaning Serafina Pekkala, of course. "The clan is greatly disturbed by a presence here. They have sensed a great evil in this area, Lyra, and it is a very powerful force of darkness that engulfs this college. I have come here so that I may return and report the source of this thing to my clan, who are only about a day's journey away as I speak. Serafina would have come herself, but she was needed elsewhere."

"Oh, Kaisa! I know what it is!" Lyra cried.

"Do you?" wondered Kaisa and Pantalaimon both.

"Well, not _exactly_," Lyra whispered, glancing down at her shoes. "Oh, _you_ know, Pantalaimon. Whatever's out there has been taking our students! The alethiometer says they're _dying_." Kaisa ruffled his feathers in alarm.

"What else has the alethiometer said?" he asked fiercely.

"We're not sure," she admitted. "It mentioned the snake, which was evil—and then the bread and the bird. We don't know what the rest of it means. _Oh_! The alethiometer said _witch_ to Pan and me! The hourglass must have said that a witch was _coming._ That's what it meant, Pan! It was talking about Kaisa…" Her voice fell to a whisper as she realized what this meant. The alethiometer had never mentioned James at all, only tried to forewarn her about the witch queen's visiting dæmon. What did that make James?

"I told you _James_ en't a witch," Pantalaimon muttered smugly. Kaisa snapped his head at the marten dæmon.

"Who is James?" he asked.

"A stupid boy," Pantalaimon answered spitefully, without concealing his distaste. "We met him in the woods, and Lyra's been thinking about him ever since. Lyra thought he was a witch because he had no dæmon. I told her that was impossible, but she insisted anyway…"

"He had no dæmon?" Kaisa's eyes flashed red, and Lyra suddenly felt small and stupid.

"Not that we could see," Pantalaimon answered cautiously. "He behaved like a normal person, like a witch without her dæmon or Will whose dæmon was inside of him. But he was from this world—he must have been—and he couldn't have been a witch. He might have been a shaman—"

"How old was the boy?"

"About our age," Pantalaimon said. "Or a little older."

The goose nodded his head. "That is about the age when shaman boys undergo the separation—that journey which only the human body can make. It's similar to the one witch girls must undergo. The human body must journey through a special place and abandon their dæmons at the brink. But it only stretches their bond, as you well know, though it is a painful and frightening process. James would be able to separate from his dæmon, if he were a shaman boy." This news sent a trickle of relief through Lyra's spine—though why it mattered so much she could hardly tell. "But there is hardly a reason for a shaman to be wandering through the woods outside of an Oxford College."

"Not a whole lot of this actually makes sense," Lyra muttered, sitting on her bed. "The killer is supposed to be supernatural."

"Are you sure there is a murderer?" Kaisa wondered, his immense eyes boring into Lyra. Pantalaimon flowed into Lyra's lap and nudged her hand.

"It pointed to the Wildman, so it must be a person."

"Shaman are supernatural," the goose stated simply. "As are witches."

Lyra sat frozen for a full minute as her mind worked around Kaisa's words. All at once, James's pallid face captured Lyra's vision, and as it filled her mind's eye she recalled the small details: the shape of his nose, the gleaming white of his teeth, the bloody chocolatl irises of his strong eyes, and…

Lyra's human heart flipped anxiously as it confirmed what Pantalaimon's dæmon heart had always known.

"Kaisa," she gasped, "he had blood on his face! He was pale—deathly, like a witch only _worse_. And Kaisa, his _eyes_ were... I think he _is_ doing this..." But Kaisa cut her off; he needed no further description. Lyra was surprised to find that Kaisa's dæmon face was pulled taut with surprise and fear. He took a waddling step back as if to regain his balance, and he spread his wings at once. Pantalaimon jumped to the floor, his furry face lined with concern.

"Kaisa, what is it?" the marten wondered, speaking for himself and his human.

"Lyra, Pantalaimon, I'm afraid that I must leave you now," he answered. "Thank you for telling me so much—and thank the Authority that I came _here_ first! Had I searched the woods instead…imagine!" Quite abruptly, the goose turned and leapt to the windowsill with a powerful flap.

"But why must you leave so soon?" Lyra begged.

"I must return to my body," he said, watching her face intently. Then, "Do not go into the woods," Kaisa warned severely, staring into Pantalaimon's eyes. "For all that you hold dear, do _not_ go into the woods!"

"Kaisa, who is James? _What _is James?" But the dæmon was gone.

As Lyra and Pantalaimon watched his goose form vanish into the hazy purple of the dusky air, they felt a similar fear settle on their hearts. James was the cause of all this after all. He was a shaman, and he had murdered Clara. They had been so close to him—but why hadn't killed them right there when they'd first met him? They were practically witnesses.

Lyra and Pantalaimon were not the only ones to watch the bodiless dæmon fly through the sky. Alice Barclay's Ruby-Throated Hummingbird dæmon spotted him first, and shrieked the news at his human. According to Petri, the dæmon had come from _Lyra's_ window! That traitor was convening with witches! By the next morning, the news had spread through most of the campus. Lyra herself was the last to hear.

But I'm getting ahead of myself... Much has yet to happen before morning approaches, and it begins as Lyra drifts off into sleep that very same night.


	9. Sleepwalk

**Chapter 8: Sleepwalk**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T (for later chapters)

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

Pan, where are you going, silly? Come back…

She giggled, watching her dæmon prance along the wardrobe. He bounded onto the desk, then came back and settled in her arms. I love you, Pan. He smiled at her and crawled out of her grasp. Pan, where are you going? The dæmon hobbled to the door in his graceful dachshund waddle. He turned and smiled at her, and then he was gone.

Pan, if someone sees you all alone…

She slipped out of the sheets, and the world glowed with an ethereal sheen. Was this for real? But James wasn't in this dream, if this was a dream, so it mustn't be a dream. And Pantalaimon was escaping all alone, so she had to go after him. She felt around the floor with her toes until they met shoes, but she didn't have time to fasten them. She must catch her Pan!

The world moved in slow motion, like tiny pictures flitting by one at a time, slow little frames of a moving photogram. She didn't ask why Pan was leaving, and she didn't wonder where she was going. Something in her told her it would be okay, and the only thing she needed to worry about was finding Pan, which was the real problem. Because the girls already thought she was a witch, and if they saw Pan by himself…

But for her worry, she wasn't really worried. For some reason.

Pan, where are you going, silly? Come back…

Down the stairs, one at a time. Four stairs, eight stairs… She hit the floor and kept walking, her feet moving rhythmically, and she couldn't have stopped if she'd wanted to. She caught a glimpse of her marten dæmon down the hall and laughed gaily, picking up her pace. Pan, come back here!

Was that her friends? She heard a noise! But no one was there, of course, and she felt safe. She was barefoot and the floor was cold, so she moved faster to catch up to Pan. Her nightdress was thin, and her shoulders were bare. The night was cold, and the door was wide open. Pan, don't go outside! But he did, so Lyra followed.

She felt vaguely cold, vaguely worn, and she moved through the world in a haze. Where are you, Pan? Where did you go? She looked for him, but where was he? Was he in the bushes? No, there was no dæmon in the bushes. Was he on the path? No, there was no dæmon ahead on the path. Where are you, Pan? Please, come back… She began to panic, and she ran ahead.

Left, right? No, Pan was not there. She ran, but her lead feet would only walk. Why couldn't she go faster? Pan, I'm scared! Pan, come back! She felt alone, she felt so lonely, and she was scared. Where was he going? Why did he leave her? Where are you, Pan?

If someone sees you alone!

She looked toward the woods. No, something forced her head, turned her eyes to the woods. The woods. The trees. And there he was, her marten dæmon, scaling a trunk, climbing into the branches. Moving toward the woods.

And she had to follow.

Don't go into the woods!

She took a few steps, her legs no longer locked in stone, and she moved toward her Pan. Her dear Pan…

For all that you hold dear, do _not_ go into the woods!

* * *

Reality crashed onto her so suddenly that she couldn't breathe at first. Suddenly her senses were alive. She could feel the cold, smell the outdoors, and she could see. The surreal film was gone, and she was struck by what she saw. She saw the faces of Evelyn and Susan. She saw Lurianne, the beautiful tarantula dæmon, and McCager, the shifting marsh wood duck.

But she didn't see Pantalaimon, and that was the most startling thing of all.

"Where am I?" Lyra whispered, her eyes widening with realization.

"We"—Evelyn was quick to speak, but not quick to get to the point on everyone's mind. "We should ask _you_—Lyra, what are you doing?"

But it was Susan who asked the obvious question.

"Lyra…where is Pan?"

Lyra couldn't breathe. She choked, held back the fears that overwhelmed her. Oh no…no, no, no, no…

"I don't know." Her voice was shaky, hardly her own. She glanced around her, as one newly woken from a dream. For that was the truth. It had been a dream, and she had been _sleepwalking_. But her dream had some truth to it, it seemed. She was in the same spot, facing the same woods. But Pantalaimon had vanished, and her stomach churned for fear.

She met the eyes of her friends, and she felt as if her heart had imploded on itself.

"Lyra, you _are_ a witch!" Susan shrieked, and Cage, Susan's McCager, that poor dæmon, flapped in distress, wailing a squawk that hardly sounded like an animal. Susan screamed and cried again, stricken by the horror of Lyra without Pan, of a human without a dæmon. But how could Lyra even be called human if she had no dæmon?!

"What's going on?" Evelyn demanded, taking a step away from Lyra, the flaxen-haired abomination. Lurianne's pedipalps lifted defensively, and she flashed her sparkling fangs, chewing the air with her chelicerata. "You—We should have listened to Victoria! We should have—"

"Have you seen him?" Lyra begged desperately, stopping the girls in their tracks. "Please, have you _seen_ him?"

Susan and Evelyn looked at each other, overwhelmed by the strangeness of such a taboo.

"No," Evelyn answered at length, watching Lyra's face warily. "We only saw you walking around out here like a zombie."

"I…I think I was sleepwalking," Lyra corrected her, glancing fearfully at the woods. "Please, help me find Pan. I—I think he's in the woods…" They stared helplessly at her, completely at a loss for words. Lyra had no time to delay… Her Pan, her dear heart and soul, was wandering the woods alone! _For all that you hold dear…_

"How do you know he's not in your room?" Evelyn whispered. Susan remained quiet, a disarrayed spectator.

"I just…I feel that he's in the woods, of course. He's my dæmon. We're still connected."

"Lyra, I… I don't…" Evelyn stopped, too shocked to speak. Lyra took a step toward the woods… she had to find Pan…

"Evelyn, Susan," Lyra groaned, searching their faces. "I need to find him. He's in…in terrible danger. And when I do, I will explain myself. I'll try to make you understand. I'll tell you everything." Her eyes sparkled severely. "But I must save Pan first."

"I'll go with you," Evelyn answered, stepping forward, as pale as a ghost. Lyra didn't ask Susan, because she could guess the stricken girl's thoughts. Instead, she ran with all the speed she could manage toward the woods, toward her Pan.

And toward the serpent.

They reached the tree line, but Evelyn stopped, too afraid to go on. Lyra scanned the treetops, and eventually Evelyn edged in after her. They both called out his name, called to Lyra's Pantalaimon. Evelyn saw him first, but only because there was no other life in the woods besides the marten. And immediately Lyra's heart relaxed; he was safe.

"Pan, come down _now!_" she shouted severely, but Pantalaimon continued to move, his eyes glazed over and unresponsive. He was asleep.

Evelyn saw it and gasped. How was Lyra's dæmon asleep when his body—when Lyra—was conscious? It was an utterly strange, utterly disgusting sight. Evelyn felt nauseous, but she held on and chased the sleepwalking dæmon with Lyra. The marten was deft in the treetops, and moved without hindrance through the branches.

"Pan, _stop_!!!" Lyra cried desperately, and Pan's eyes blinked and opened with a flurry of consciousness.

Lyra felt tears of utter relief flow down her pale face. Evelyn watched, gently holding her dæmon to her heart, and the initial horror began to subside. Lyra was with Pantalaimon again, and they were clearly unaffected by their separation.

"Lyra, what's going on?" Pan wondered, shaking uncontrollably, spinning his head around madly. He dropped from the branch into the safety of her arms.

"You were sleepwalking," Lyra moaned. "Me too. Pan, Susan and Evelyn saw…"

"I was dreaming," Pantalaimon whispered. "Lyra, I was going to the clearing…" Her eyes widened.

"Why were you going to him?"

"I couldn't stop…"

"Lyra, let's go back," Evelyn interjected suddenly, shifting her weight uneasily. "I don't like it here."

"Yeah," Lyra agreed immediately. "It's not safe here… We need to leave."

So they did. Without a thought, without a backward glance, they hurried out of the darkness of the woods. Soon the buildings came into view, and they could see Susan standing like a statue on the grass. She was unmoved, ash white, and holding her dæmon fast in her arms. Lyra felt her heart drop, and she exchanged a worried glance with Pantalaimon. They had each other again, but now they had another problem. Everything that they'd worked so hard to protected was no longer a secret. Until now, only Dame Hannah had been aware of her story (the whole, true story, not the rumors and half-truths that the whole college knew), and now… Who knew how many more girls would know the truth by morning?

But of all the girls, Susan and Evelyn could be trusted most. Couldn't they?

No one spoke, but all eyes were on Lyra. "Let's go back to my room and talk," Lyra suggested, averting her eyes. The others agreed.

So there they were, huddled in a circle on the floor of Lyra's dorm room. The dæmons were looking away, pretending not to care. But there was a tension in the air so great, and it was obvious that they were on edge. Was Lyra a witch? They would find out soon enough. After a glance at Pan, Lyra began.

"This is going to sound absurd," Lyra warned them with a half-smile. "But please… and I always begin this way...I'm not going to lie to you, so please believe everything I say. Just promise me that." The girls looked at each other, and Evelyn nodded her head. McCager was shaking, but Lyra tried not to notice. "First off, I sort of…am a witch. Serafina Pekkala—she's the clan queen of some witches in Lake Enara—said that Pan and I were every bit a witch, except that we won't live as long, and we can't fly. We weren't born witches. It's just part of the story.

"It started back at Jordan College. My father, Lord Asriel, visited the college, and Pan and I were hidden in the wardrobe…" And she told them everything. She told them about Bolvangar, and she felt the prickles of disgust and sadness rise in her chest as she told of her near-separation with Pan (Pantalaimon himself could hardly bear to listen to this part, but turned his face into her shirt to muffle the words). She told them about Roger and the hole in the sky. She told them about Citigazzé and her meeting with Will Parry. And though her heart throbbed whenever she pictured his face, she told her friends about Will and their adventures. Then she told them about the Land of the Dead, and her reunion with Pantalaimon. She told them how she and Will had to be separated. And when the tears started, she couldn't stop them. She cried and cried, and her friends could see that the story had ended, so they didn't urge her to speak.

Susan was quiet, but Evelyn placed her hand on Lyra's shoulder to comfort her weeping. When at last Lyra had settled down, she studied the girls' faces for the first time. No one knew what to say. Pantalaimon shifted in her lap, looking around at them. At last, it was Susan who spoke first.

"I see why you never told anyone," was all she said. And she stood and left.

Lyra watched her in stunned silence, her nerves crying out in anxiety. She turned sharply to Evelyn, her eyes wide and pleading.

"I believe you," Evelyn assured her. "I just…need some time to sort through it all. A lot has happened to you. I just…" Evelyn grew quiet. What else could she say? There was so much information to adjust to, to digest. To soak in.

"I'm sorry," Lyra whispered. "I'm sorry for getting you involved in this."

"It's all right," Evelyn said, smiling. "Everyone has always dreamed of knowing the secret of Lyra Belacqua-Silvertongue. I get to be one of the fortunate few who doesn't have to dream." Lyra smiled. It was a sad smile, but it was the first happy gesture since she'd woken up in the middle of the campus. It felt good. "So," Evelyn said, pulling her knees to her chest. They were both dressed for bed, but neither was tired anymore. "What's in the woods?"

"We don't know," Lyra said, thankful for the change of subject. "Kaisa visited us earlier today—Serafina Pekkala's dæmon. He said not to go into the woods once we told him about…James."

"Who?" Lurianne asked.

"You know our clearing?" Pan said. Evelyn and her dæmon nodded. "The night when Clara disappeared, we were supposed to meet her in the clearing. You knew that. We didn't tell anyone, but we saw a boy there who called himself James. And he didn't have a dæmon." Evelyn's eyebrows furrowed, and a shiver ran through her body.

"Has he…"

"We thought he was a shaman," Lyra told her. "And when we told Kaisa about James, he said that James—he looked about our age—was the right age for a young shaman. They can separate from their dæmons, so…"

"But it's _got_ to be James," Evelyn concluded. "Right? I mean, what else could be doing this...?"

"Well, the alethiometer said it was something supernatural and evil," Lyra informed her. "So if James is a shaman, that would make him supernatural. I guess I don't know how that makes him evil…"

"But Kaisa went mad when we described James," Pantalaimon said, "so there's obviously something wrong with him. And then there are those symbols."

"Yes," Lyra answered, her skin crawling with excitement. Finally, someone was really listening to her. And believing her. "Dame Hannah couldn't figure out what they meant. The bird, the bread, and—well, the serpent, but we know what that means. And there were a few others, but I think those were the important ones."

"Lyra," Evelyn said, raising an eyebrow, "we don't know _anything_ about alethiometry."

"Yeah," Lyra moaned. "That's the problem."

They looked at the floor, thinking, digesting. And they both had the same thought: thank goodness they had come out of the woods safe! Thank goodness they had found Pantalaimon! But then the night's events came back to them, and they all found themselves wondering why Lyra and Pantalaimon had been out there to begin with. Why had they subconsciously walked into that death trap?

"Do you suppose it was James?" Evelyn whispered, and Lyra knew what she meant.

"No," she answered. "What would he have wanted with me? There are a hundred girls in this school."

Evelyn agreed, but Pantalaimon slunk low to the ground and didn't utter a sound. All he could think about was James's face and the many times it had appeared in the shadows and the mirrors and the corners of his eye. Part of him, despite his human, was sure that James wanted nothing less than his lovely, fiery Lyra Silvertongue.

* * *

There we go! Chapter 8--"Sleepwalk". I have written the entire story besides the last chapter and the epilogue, so don't worry about whether or not I'll ever finish this. I'm very much active and very much dedicated to completing _Insatiable_. I just want to stretch it out a bit. :)

-Nimfalas "pi" Roth


	10. Netopýr

As one of my faithful reviewers pointed out: it's time to update! :) If you drop by and enjoy the story, please submit a review and let me know! This chapter's considerably shorter than some of the others, but I'll make up for it. Oh, I will certainly make up for it. *evil grin* The next update won't be very far away.

Enjoy the next installment of "Insatiable!" (And I hate to sound like a beggar, but please review! Thanks a ton.)

**Chapter 9: Netopýr**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

Lyra opened her eyes and was met by dim light. It was bleak, ominous light, and outside the air was as gray and overcast as the day she had arrived at St. Sophia's. She blinked. Why was the window over there? She rolled over and realized that she was still on the floor—and she was alone. Before she could panic, Pantalaimon leapt to the floor and hushed her.

"Evelyn fell asleep here too," he said, crawling into her lap. "She woke up when I did and went back to her room to check on Susan. Are you tired?"

"No, I'm awake now," she answered. She picked herself up stiffly from the ground and sat on the bed, which was infinitely more comfortable than her hard floorboards. "Pan, do you hear something?"

As soon as Lyra had detected the faint thud behind her, a shadow covered the room, cutting off the dusky light. Lyra spun around in fear, but immediately sighed her relief; the figure in the window was obviously a witch. She was no witch that Lyra had met before, but she bore the pale, bare arms and thin, black silk attire that was characteristic of witches. Pantalaimon scurried to the foot of the bed as Lyra pulled open the window. The witch's brown hair was matted in places, but her beauty was astounding nevertheless. She looked young, but Lyra knew better. The witch was probably a few hundred years old.

"Lyra Silvertongue?" the witch asked.

"Yes."

Deftly, the witch came through the window with an almost feline fluidity. Around her back she wore a heavy quiver full of brightly feathered arrows, and in her hands she clutched a branch of cloudpine and a short, powerful bow. Lyra moved out of the way for her, and the witch gently set the bow on the ground at her feet. Then she turned to Lyra, who looked up at the witch expectantly.

"Where's your dæmon?" Lyra asked.

"I sent Eldamiron to the woods to scout. He is a kestrel, so his eyes are keen. He can fly safely above the trees."

"Oh," Lyra said, and then waited for the witch to speak.

"I was sent ahead by Serafina Pekkala," said the witch, addressing both Lyra and her dæmon. "My name is Regina Skeptor, and I am here to help."

"Is the clan coming, then?" Lyra asked excitedly. "Is Serafina Pekkala on her way?"

"Yes," Regina Skeptor said, grinning at the girl's enthusiasm. "Kaisa returned to us in great distress, and we decided at once that something had to be done, before things get out of control. Though it sounds as though they already have… Tell me—have there been more losses since Kaisa's visit?"

"Actually, no…" Lyra admitted after a moment of careful thought. Regina Skeptor's eyes narrowed seriously.

"Then he will be hungry."

Lyra was about to ask "who", but then Evelyn burst through Lyra's door. Her face was colorless, and she was gasping for air; she had been running. Lurianne, though normally unreadable, was clearly alarmed.

"Lyra, Susan is gone," she managed to gasp.

"What do you mean?"

"Has she been taken?" Regina asked earnestly. Evelyn noticed her for the first time and knew and once that she was a witch.

"Serafina Pekkala?"

"Regina Skeptor," the witch corrected her.

"Oh," Evelyn breathed. Splotchy color began to emerge in her cheeks, and she continued anxiously, "Yes, I think she _has_ been…taken. There's no reason for her to be gone this early! We're banned from the halls, and no one is allowed outside. Lyra, I'm scared. She _must_ have been taken!"

Lyra turned to Regina Skeptor solemnly. "When will the clan arrive?"

"They should land soon," she answered, sensing the urgency. "They know the gravity of this thing. It will take every sister to destroy this evil." Lyra and Evelyn exchanged a fearful glance.

"What evil? What's in the woods?"

"Don't you know?" the witch asked, looking genuinely surprised. It was clear that the girls didn't know, so she leaned toward them. "Their kind have existed as long as witches. No one is sure how the first one came to be—there are many legends, but the only thing we know certainly is that they were not created through anything good or natural. For that reason and many more, they have been the enemies of witches and humans forever. But, most especially, they are the enemies of witches."

"Why?" Lyra asked breathlessly. "What are they?"

"We call them netopýres," Regina Skeptor whispered, as if the name were the most horrific word in all creation. "And they are _our_ sworn enemies because they cannot kill us."—before Lyra could interject, she added—"Rather than die, we _become_ them. We live in an eternal half-life, tormented as netopýres ourselves. It would be far better to die."

"I still don't understand," Evelyn whispered, obviously frightened. But Regina Skeptor was unresponsive. A sudden blank, unreadable expression had passed over her face. Evelyn wondered if it was some sort of witch trance, but then a look of sheer, pained anguish replaced the blankness. Regina Skeptor shrieked in agony, writhing on the floor, tormented by something unseen, and Lyra recognized the horror-stricken, knowing pain in the witch's eyes. Pantalaimon flew to the ground in a panic.

"It's her dæmon!" he shouted helplessly. "Something is happening to her dæmon!"

"In the woods!" Lyra murmured in terror.

Evelyn screamed, "What should we do?!" but there was nothing they could do, so the miserable witch took matters into her own hands. She stretched her arm to her back and lifted an amber-feathered arrow from her quiver.

"He—he has no chance of escaping!" the witch gasped sorrowfully.

In the next moment, a look of peace had claimed Regina Skeptor's features, and one of her own faithful arrows was buried deep in her heart.

"Lyra, what do we do?" Evelyn half-shrieked, half-moaned. "Susan's out there! Regina—"

Lyra's head was spinning, and she could hardly concentrate on her friend's distressed words.

"Evelyn, go get help," she said, her eyes distant. "I'll get Susan."

"No!" cried Pantalaimon and Evelyn together.

"The witches will be here soon with Serafina Pekkala," she said thoughtfully, "but they might not get here soon enough to help Susan. I won't get hurt. I need to do something."

"Lyra, I'll go too," Evelyn said, trying to sound brave. "We'll be better off if there's two of us."

"Yeah, I guess," she said, not really focusing. Pantalaimon cried out and flew to his human's side, but he couldn't change her mind. He didn't say a word, but she knew that he would come as well. He wouldn't leave her again, and neither would she leave him.

Lyra came to life with a snap, and she rushed to her chest and pulled the anbaric torch from the bottom drawer. Pantalaimon climbed into the drawer and dug through the items, emerging with a belt in his mouth.

"What's that?" Evelyn wondered.

"It was a gift from the Ice Bears at Svalbard," Lyra answered, taking the belt and fastening it around her waist. "Iorek gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday, and I think he made it himself. Bears are very good at working metal." Evelyn looked closer and noticed that on the silver belt hung a delicately ornamented holster, from which the scarlet handle of a knife protruded. Pantalaimon had been lucky to remember it; they may need this knife in the dark woods. "I think you should find something as well," Lyra added with a solemn glance at Regina Skeptor's still form. "She en't gonna need those arrows anymore. It's okay. She'd rather you were safe."

Evelyn gave a little moan of terror and took the wooden quiver from the back of the witch, fastening it to her own back. Lurianne climbed into the quiver, checking on the state of the arrows. Evelyn couldn't use the bow, but having the sharp arrows in her defense certainly wouldn't hurt.

"Ready?" Lyra asked, her face frozen in brave determination.

"Yeah," Evelyn answered, tucking her fragile dæmon into her shirt pocket.

A furious pounding on the door gave them both a start. A voice shouted from the other side—voic_es_, actually. Voices that belonged to the headmistress and Dame Reaghan Henderson.

"Lyra Belacqua, come out this instant," they cried, and Lyra could tell by their tone that she was in terrible trouble.

"I told you," came another voice. It was Victoria.

"It's about Kaisa," Evelyn said nervously. "Victoria said she was going to tell the scholars about him, but I never believed she really would! She's convinced that you're organizing the murders with the witches or something."

"Let's hurry and get out of here," Lyra whispered gravely, rushing to the window. Pantalaimon flowed out onto the roof first, leading the way as bravely as a little lion.

"You're not serious!" Evelyn exclaimed, staying fast on solid ground.

"Absolutely I am," Lyra muttered, crawling through. The door began to shake menacingly, and the voices rose even louder. Evelyn gasped and ran to the bed, climbing up onto the mattress and through the window. The fog over the school campus was so thick that they could hardly make out the ground from where they stood, and Lyra's anbaric torch was doing nothing to help. "Meet you at the bottom," Lyra said with a grin, and she took the rain gutter into her hands, sliding down to the invisible grass.

As she waited for Evelyn to follow, she turned her eyes toward the woods. Dark, tall, and more ominous than they ever had been. She felt a strong dread in her heart, but she had to go. Pantalaimon rubbed his body along her legs, a pillar of comfort and strength in this time of desperate need. Together they would be strong. They could make it as long as they had each other.

Though taking him with her was probably Lyra's greatest mistake.

* * *

Regina Skeptor? Why does that sound familiar...? Wasn't she involved in another hit fantasy series?! Find the correlation and you'll get a big, fat cybercookie. :)

Thanks for reading! The next chapter ("The Bird, the Bread, and the Serpent") is coming very soon.


	11. The Bird, the Bread, and the Serpent

MileyEmilyfan4ever--Yeah. I was totally talking about you. :) Without further interruption, here is Chapter Ten...a little early. Yay.

**Chapter 10: The Bird, the Bread, and the Serpent**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

"Come on now, this way," Lyra murmured, trying to help her companion keep up with her pace. Evelyn was scared, Lyra could see that easily, but she hadn't turned back yet. Lyra doubted that she _would_ turn back. After all, this wasn't just anyone's life at risk. This was Susan's life.

Inside the woods, the mist was less overwhelming. In fact, there was little fog at all. But that didn't increase the visibility; it was dark enough in those dense brambles that even Lyra's little anbaric torch couldn't penetrate the blackness. A little beam of light shot out of the torch, and Lyra directed it here and there, scanning the path with the small spotlight. Pantalaimon bravely led the way, hopping over the rocks and through the long shoots of grass. Lyra kept the light on him and her eyes on the trees. They all knew where they were headed. They were moving toward the special site that had started this madness.

They were going to the clearing.

Lyra held her breath and quickened her pace. Around her the trees were becoming taller and more sinister—a telltale sign that they were approaching the clearing. A halo of light emerged in the distance—it was muted, gray light, but light nonetheless. The clearing was in sight.

What now?

Lyra stopped. She hadn't thought this far ahead. What would they do once they found him? What _could_ they do? Lyra gripped her knife handle and listened hard. Pantalaimon scaled the trunk of a tree and peered ahead, clinging to the bark vertically like a woodpecker. The woods were utterly still and lifeless.

"Are you sure they're there?" Evelyn asked, her voice wobbling. Lyra was afraid to look at her.

"Yeah," she said, but her heart wasn't so sure.

"Let's hurry," Pantalaimon whispered, sliding to the grass. "Let's rescue Susan and get out of here." Lyra took the lead and ran, pushing closer, her head spinning, her senses overwhelmed with sheer anticipation. They burst through the trees and into the thick mist that permeated the small meadow, their hearts pounding loudly in their ears. Evelyn crept behind Lyra, staying close to her courageous friend. They looked around, but saw nothing. The fog settled heavily around them, swirling about their legs in creeping little tendrils.

"I don't see anything," Lyra complained, whirling around in all directions. "They're not here!"

But Pantalaimon felt what she could not see, and he retreated between her legs fearfully. Lyra breathed out, and her breath came in a cloud. The cold struck her suddenly, knocking the breath from her lungs, and she struggled for a moment to breathe. Evelyn gasped behind her, feeling the frigid breeze as well. A second later, there was utter stillness. Even the fog remained stationary in that timeless second.

Then Lyra felt breath on her neck, like a biting whisper.

"I've been waiting for you."

And then the world collapsed. A shriek erupted from beside her as a dæmonless body dropped from the air, and Pantalaimon cried out incoherently. There was a clack as the torch fell against a stone. Lyra fell to the ground as a blow hit her square in the back, and she felt a jab slice through her side—a stinging wound that she knew hadn't affected her own body, but the body of her dear dæmon. She cried out to him blindly, forgetting all about her friend, and her limbs locked in pain and terror. Where was Pan?! She felt his furry body force itself into her arms, but it hardly relaxed her heart. As the mist parted for a brief moment, she saw that the motionless body splayed out before her was Susan. Deathly white, deathly still, _dæmonless_ Susan! Lyra's heart seized within her chest.

"Lyra," Evelyn moaned beside her. Lyra collected her bearings for a moment, and then she saw his face, like a ghost in the haze.

"You killed her!" Lyra screamed with fierce hatred. "You _killed_ her!" Pantalaimon trembled in her arms, and she collected him against her chest protectively. Evelyn pressed her body against Lyra too, shaking and shaking, her hands locked on Lyra's arm. Blood was gushing from somewhere on Evelyn's scalp, and it covered her face. Head wounds always looked worse than they actually were, so Lyra didn't worry. At least Evelyn was alive!

"Now, now, Lyra," James said, his voice emitting from the side now. "Don't jump to conclusions." He stepped forward, clear of the mist, and she saw a limp, colorful bird held firmly in his arms. The wood duck was unconscious, but it meant that Susan was clearly alive.

"Let him go," Lyra commanded, her voice firm and unrelenting. He was _touching_ her dæmon! It wasn't right—it was unreservedly forbidden. Every human being knew the law innately—never, _never_ touch another person's dæmon! "Let them go _now_!"

"I don't think I will," he said, circling the girls, dragging McCager farther and farther from his body.

"Stop it!" Lyra shrieked, climbing to her feet.

"No," said James.

And then it hit her. All at once, it crashed down on Lyra. Understanding flickered into her ice-blue eyes, and she knew. She knew what the symbols meant.

And she saw why neither she nor anyone else could interpret the meaning of the alethiometer.

_He will be hungry…_ Lyra doubled over in her place and heaved, choking on her own vomit. The thought…the thought of it was revolting, sordid—it went against everything natural, every code of etiquette, everything human and humane. James was nothing more than a monster, a repugnant, nightmarish fiend. "You—you _eat dæmons!_" It was a shriek of terror and disbelief, a cry of sheer agony that erupted from her throat of its own accord.

"What a ludicrous notion, Lyra," he said with a cruel smirk, and his white face appeared before hers. His once chocolatl-brown eyes—his big, brown _deer_ eyes—were now blood red, and his lucent face was crawling with throbbing blue veins. He flashed his white teeth at her, and he whispered, "I crave only their blood."

And Lyra could only watch, stricken to the core with abhorrence, and he turned those flashing teeth into the feathers of her friend's soul.

Evelyn must have fainted, because a pressure was relieved from Lyra's arm immediately. Pantalaimon whimpered miserably and dove into Lyra's blouse as she rose in a reckless fury, shouting bitterly as she charged at the despicable thing. The _netopýr_. Lyra Silvertongue lashed out at him, fighting desperately with nails and teeth, but James easily knocked her to the side. As her body smashed into the ground, her fingers closed around the handle of her fallen torch. Snarling ferociously, she sprang to her feet like a wildcat, swinging the aluminum torch like a club—but his palm was waiting , and he snatched it out of her grasp. Her hand groped for her knife's hilt, but he caught her wrists before she could reach it. The piercing cold of his touch was almost painful, and she cried out in vain, struggling against him with all of her might, screaming and weeping. Pantalaimon growled threateningly, but James only laughed, flinging McCager's limp body to the side.

He brought his face close to hers, and she saw his bloody eyes settle into green flecks—a color duller than Susan's mellow eyes, but the same forest green nevertheless. Lyra stopped struggling and stared hard at him, holding her breath, hardening her face.

"There's something different about you," James commented, drawing her closer, following his nose into her breast where Pantalaimon huddled against her bare skin. Pan's rumbling growl grew louder as he dug his little claws deeper into her flesh. James was so close that Lyra could see the subtle transformation of his face as the blue veins faded and his skin become smooth and perfect once again. "Of everyone I've met—there was only one dæmon like you. Since I was born, there's only been one dæmon like you, and I found _you_ first."

Suddenly James howled—a gnashing sound that hardly sounded human. Lyra was released at once, and she looked down in surprise to find an amber arrow lodged in James's calf. Evelyn snatched Lyra's arm and dragged her away, and they both ran as fast as their legs would carry them—hurry! Faster, faster—before he catches up!

But they had barely reached the edge of the clearing when James appeared before them, and when they banked frantically to the left, there he was again—one step ahead of them, faster than their eyes could hope to follow. His face glowed with malice, and he clutched the arrow in his fist. Suddenly he was at Evelyn's side, and he forced the arrow deep into her shoulder. Evelyn fell backwards with a cry, spilling the other arrows from the quiver, and Lurianne's voice screamed in the same ghostly wail as her human.

Lyra struggled to breathe, struggled to think. "Lyra, run!" Pan hollered, but James barred her path, moving closer and closer toward her. She was like a deer in headlights. What to do?! Evelyn whimpered on the ground out of reach, and Susan—though still alive—lay inert, yards away. The witches would be here soon, wouldn't they?

But not soon enough.

"Please, don't give up," the boy said, inches away now. "Humor me."

His pale hand touched Lyra's crossed arms, running along the fragile barrier that guardedly held her dear Pantalaimon against her heart, inside her shirt. James's hand closed like a vice around her wrist and ripped away the barrier. No! Never! Lyra recoiled, tried to run, but his hand caught Pantalaimon through the thin cotton of her blouse, and she lost the ability to see, to think, and to balance herself in the suddenly spinning world. Faint and sick to her very soul, Lyra's world became Pantalaimon, her thoughts merged with her dæmon, her heart went out to him—he was her heart!—and she moaned weakly, thinking in vain how wrong it was, how disgustingly taboo, how horrific, how inconsiderate, how _inhuman_!! Pantalaimon, her dear Pan!

"Don't you _touch_ him!" she shrieked at once, but her protest only ripped the fine cotton material that bound Pan to her—and James had him. Pan snarled, bit, scratched, hissed, clawed—but James held him fast, constricting him vehemently until the swooning marten dæmon lost his consciousness. James drew his face into Pan's tousled red fur, heedless of the hands—Lyra's frantic hands—that strangled his arms, clawed at his chest, tugged at his hands which held Pan like a cage.

But James hesitated. For a split second, he looked at Lyra with awe-stricken eyes as it occurred to him that she _shouldn't_ be fighting. That a normal human being should be unconscious, because—yes, her dæmon was unconscious—so why wasn't _she_?

And in that split second, Lyra's Svalbard knife pierced James in the chest.

Everything moved slowly as Lyra caught her limp dæmon in her arms. She drew him against her chest, holding on to him tightly, afraid to let him go. Her ripped shirt let the cold pour in against her skin, and oh, the cold was frigid now, relentlessly bitter to her flesh. She saw color from the corner of her eye, and it was the bright patterns of a wood duck, his red eyes flashing with pain and fear, caught in the arms of a wide-eyed, fully awake Susan. Evelyn was staggering to her feet, clutching the lodged arrow with one hand and her shirt pocket with the other, and she found Susan there too. Pan's little chest fluttered as he moved against her arms, and Lyra's heart erupted with such an intense feeling of affection that she staggered for a moment.

"Pan, he's after _you_," she whispered to him as the rest of the world passed by in a sluggish blur. "I love you Pan—I know you love me, and if you do love me—_run_. Take the others out and wait for the witches. _Run_, Pan—please."

Lyra shot a glance at Evelyn, who caught it and immediately understood. But then a look of horror flashed over Evelyn's features, and Lyra felt iron arms fasten around her shoulders. A menacing voice laughed voraciously in her ear.

"You _are_ a fighter."

Then Lyra let go of Pan—and as the dæmon fled with the other human beings, she held onto James, latched onto his limbs, so that he was rooted to her and to that place. Immediately, the forms of her friends vanished into the fog, and Lyra felt James's arms tighten around her. She held her breath, closed her eyes, and begged the Authority for mercy.

"And I thought you were clever," he whispered in her ear. She stiffened at the stench of his breath. "They've escaped now, but you and I both know that they will have to return; your dæmon won't leave you."

Lyra bit her lip, and all she could think to say was, "How can you possibly know? You, who has no dæmon."

"Not always," he told her with a malicious grin. "But I don't remember being human."

* * *

Like this chapter? Drop a review! Next installment coming soon.

If you're enjoying Insatiable, keep an eye out for its upcoming companion piece (currently going by the fond name of "The Post-Lyra Chronicles"), which focuses on Will's story after the Amber Spyglass ending. Thanks for reading!


	12. Insatiable

**Chapter 11: Insatiable**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

Lyra! His dear Lyra! What a dæmon he was. He was high-tailing it like a coward, leaving his body, his heart, to fend for herself against—against a _monster_.

What a dæmon he was!

"I—I don't—where are we going?" Susan moaned dazedly, stumbling over the uneven ground. She was still struggling to grasp the situation—or else she simply could not accept what was happening.

She could not accept that this abomination… But no, they couldn't think of it. It was far too disgusting, far too…

"We're going as far away from _him_…" Evelyn gasped, but she trailed off, biting her lip hard. Lurianne had emerged from her shirt pocket, and the Chilean Rose Tarantula turned her sympathetic eyes to Pantalaimon, who carved the way ahead of them. The dæmons' hearts went out to him. They couldn't fully understand the sacrifice the poor thing was making, but they could guess it, and their hearts ached at the thought of abandoning their other half. In fact, McCager thought, he could never have left Susan alone. How could he imagine fleeing while Susan remained? But the dæmons turned their heads away from Pantalaimon out of embarrassment; Pan was completely naked in front of them. He had no body.

His body was in the clearing, held hostage by the _netopýr_.

"We can't just leave Lyra!" Susan puffed.

"She asked me to," Pan said, barely subduing his swelling heart. "He can't hurt her, because then _I_ would vanish…" But his words were merely spoken as vain reassurance to himself. He didn't know. He only hoped and prayed. Lyra was right; if _he_ was out of the immediate danger, then maybe they could prolong their life a little. Maybe they could make it out in one piece.

"Oh, this is so absurd," Evelyn groaned, her energy draining rapidly. "I can hardly believe this is happening…This only happens…in _fantasies_…"

"Or nightghasts," Susan whispered, her face colorless.

The disheveled group heard shouts in the distance, and the muted light of safety bled through the darkness. It couldn't have mattered whose voices they heard, because the voices meant refuge! Safety! It meant that they would be all right! Except—Pan thought dismally—for his dear Lyra.

So when the voices turned out to be Victoria and some furious adults, the small band of miscreants couldn't have been happier.

The headmistress and her Quoll immediately rushed to Evelyn, who fainted at once, and the other women's attentions were quickly fixated on the swooning arrow-struck girl. They noted the color of the feathers and the craftsmanship of the shaft. It was a witch arrow, clearly enough, and it was plunged deep into a student! But—all too quickly—the women became hushed as they noticed the extra dæmon in the group. The humanless, bodiless, _functioning_ dæmon of Lyra Silvertongue. And yet, where was Lyra? No student had a dæmon nearly like Pantalaimon, and it was obviously him. The lesser ladies began to shake in terror, and Pan himself—crushed as he was—only hunkered closer to the ground. But the headmistress retained her bearings, and the Quoll approached the naked marten dæmon.

"Where is Lyra?" he asked Pantalaimon.

"In the woods," Pan choked, barely keeping his heart together. "She's in the woods, and we have to rescue her!"

A murmur passed through the other adults—Dame Reaghan, Madame Cooney, Madame Loving, and Dame Annebertice—but they soon quieted. Susan's green eyes focused on Victoria in a malicious glare, but Victoria was too captured by Pantalaimon to notice anything else. The headmistress's eyes flashed, and her cat-sized marsupial dæmon circled Pantalaimon.

"What kind of a dæmon are you?" he growled fiercely, pacing in circles around the marten. "A dæmon should protect his human! How dare you leave her—"

"But—how can he leave her?" Dame Reaghan gasped, her face horror-stricken. "Were you…were you ripped apart?" Several of the women and their dæmons flinched.

"They have the same ability as witches," the headmistress informed them without taking her eyes from poor Pantalaimon. "Dame Hannah told me, but no one else was supposed to know. No, they are not witches. But in their adventures, Lyra had to abandon him to travel into a forbidden place. So their bond has been stretched, and Pantalaimon can travel far from Lyra without consequences."

McCager flew from Susan's arms and stumbled to Pantalaimon's side, and Susan stepped forward, clutching the headmistress's arm with both hands. "You don't know—he is after Pan, not Lyra, but he has Lyra now and he almost—he almost—"

"Slow down," the headmistress commanded, and the expression that passed over her face was unreadable. "Who is after Pantalaimon?"

"Not just Pantalaimon," Evelyn moaned, her consciousness slowly returning to her. "He's after dæmons…"

"What's-his-name, the boy, he has no dæmon, but he wants _ours_…!"

"James," Pantalaimon grunted, scowling at the grass. "He is a netopýr, and he has been killing the girls."

No one could comprehend the gravity of those words, and the women simply exchanged stunned glances. Only the headmistress understood what that meant, and Pantalaimon's eyes flashed with hope.

"We can save her," he moaned hopefully. "Come on, if we go back—"

"No," the headmistress shouted at once. She turned her eyes on the forest, and her dæmon leapt into her arms in fear. "No, I will not risk anyone's life. We need to leave! We need to leave _now_…"

"You don't understand!" Evelyn screamed, kicking against the arms that began to pull her away. "Lyra saved us! She saved us—we have to go _back!_"

"Th – the witches are on their way," Pantalaimon gasped helplessly, shifting in alarm. "They're going to—"

"Witches!" Victoria gasped accusingly, her coyote dæmon jumping in alarm. "You see—they _are_ with witches!"

"Victoria, please," the headmistress sighed, pushed to her breaking point. "We should thank them for connecting with witches, if the witches' bows are turned against that fiend." The girl's canine dæmon snarled, but the cat-sized Quoll quickly put him in his place. "I will hear no more out of you," the headmistress said. "Ladies, get these girls to the infirmary right away."

Evelyn and Susan hollered and thrashed against the scholars' arms, but eventually they were dragged away toward the infirmary. The scholars' dæmons also assisted; the lynx dæmon of Dame Reaghan seized McCager and pulled him away from Pantalaimon. Cage flapped and wailed, but he couldn't fight against the teeth of the lynx dæmon. But as the Quoll approached Pantalaimon and bent to take the panicked marten into his jaws, something happened. Pantalaimon froze, feeling Lyra's fear with a sense of intense foreboding, and whimpered for Lyra before it even hit.

And then he wailed in such agony that every living creature near them froze in place.

Pantalaimon shrieked in pain and fear, and he took off in a mad dash for the woods. Lyra was in danger! She was being hurt—oh, why did he _ever_ leave her?! He was so stupid, so, so stupid… The Quoll leapt after him in alarm, and the headmistress helped to chase him down. Pan squealed in agony as Lyra took another blow, but the Quoll's teeth fastened around his neck before he could run deeper into the woods.

"Stop it, let me go, let me go!" Pan wailed, kicking and weeping. "Let me go—_Lyra_!!"

And Lyra, crouched in the grass, felt her dæmon's fear and love. She whimpered, but not for herself. She whimpered in fear for her dæmon.

"Are you finished?" James scoffed, looming above her like a shadow in the mist. Lyra didn't look at him, but she nodded her head once. She could taste blood, but she couldn't tell where it had come from.

Lyra picked herself up and—though she staggered—stood firmly before James. She acted as though she didn't hurt, and she was succeeding in making him believe it. She scowled at him defiantly, but she wouldn't try to run again. She'd already made that mistake.

"Are you hungry?" she sneered. James—that ghastly apparition in the fog—smiled wickedly.

"Always."

Lyra stood, trembling, and faced away from the netopýr. Ahead of her stretched the infinite cedar-oak woods, a canopy of deciduous green held high by lofty, dark pillars. Normally there would be life everywhere: deer mice foraging in the grass and trees, free-tailed bats roosting beneath the shaded leaves, chorus frogs chirruping a great cacophony of music for their audience of listeners. And birds! Colorful cardinals and swifts would dart around the sky, and duller birds too, like the little sparrows and finches that nibbled on bits of seed. Yet, all of this was gone. There were no woodchucks in the ground, nor were there fox squirrels storing away their winter nuts as usual.

There was no life but Lyra.

Sure, James was there. But... he could hardly be considered alive. He was a human being without a dæmon, and what kind of a life was that? It was a half-existence, breath and hunger and work without meaning or reason. Why would anyone rather exist in that way than die?

And how could anyone live in…_that_ manner without revulsion toward himself, or remorse, or overwhelming grief and reluctance. Surely even James felt some sort of sickening jolt every time he took another person's dæmon into his filthy hands.

Lyra wrapped her arms around herself to keep in the last of her heat. The thick mist was collecting on her clothes, and already she was soaked to the bone. And thanks largely in part to evaporation—that wonderful cooling process—her limbs were beginning to shake uncontrollably in fierce cold. Though, that may have also had something to do with her predicament and her company. And it was her unfortunate companion that dominated her thoughts. He—_James_—must have become a netopýr unwillingly. Hadn't Regina Skeptor said that witches become netopýres? Perhaps it was the same for shamans. Perhaps James was a shaman after all, and his poor dæmon—whatever form she had taken—had fallen victim to another netopýr.

Lyra didn't feel as much like a captive now, and she chanced a look at her captor. He had taken a seat on the moist grass, just within range that he was barely discernable through the haze. Just close enough to Lyra that he could watch her, and no closer. She fell onto the grass too, still shaking with cold and shock, and pulled her knees up to her chest. There were some nasty grass stains on her skirt now, and more and more splatters of crimson were staining it. She touched her forehead tenderly and realized that she had a nasty gash above her eyebrow: the source of all the blood. Lyra winced and pressed her muddy palm against it, applying pressure to stop the flow of blood.

It didn't work well, but she felt a bit better.

Especially because Pantalaimon, she knew, was safely out of reach. Without her dæmon here, she felt much safer. James wouldn't attack her, would he? Would he be lured by _her_ blood? Her _human_ blood?

"You won't eat _me_, will you?" she asked him, realizing how stupid it sounded only after it escaped her mouth.

"No," he responded, unamused.

"Oh." She took a fistful of grass into her hands. "You only..."

"Yes."

"Why do you do it?" she asked suddenly, glancing up at him with a furious look of disbelief. "How can you do it?"

"Why do you eat the earth's fruits and drink the rivers?" he retaliated. "I cannot help it. I always thirst... I could drink the blood of a hundred dæmons and still not be satisfied. My thirst is insatiable."

"But you had a daemon once, didn't you?" she cried angrily, seething with rage. "You _had_ a dæmon, so how - "

"I don't remember being human," he told her again, his green-red eyes flashing through the mist.

"What was your dæmon's form?"

"I don't remember."

"What was her _name_?!"

"I don't know."

"Who were your - "

"That's enough!" he bellowed suddenly, appearing inches away from her face. Lyra held her breath, unable to move or think. His churning eyes fastened on her, and she lost all motivation to speak.

Lyra understood at once why Regina Skeptor had no desire to live once her dæmon had been caught.

"Sorry," she muttered, ripping her eyes away from his. She didn't move from her place, however, and at length he retreated to a safe distance. He watched her intently, his face hardening as every second ticked by. Lyra couldn't read his face, couldn't tell what he was thinking. His eyes would flash anger at once, but then his features would stiffen like stone, and his eyes would burn into her as though he were tearing her apart in his mind, digging deeper and deeper into her.

He looked at her as if he were...confused.

"What are you, a witch?" he clucked after several minutes of horrible silence. Lyra's heart stopped.

"Yeh," she muttered dazedly, her eyes widening. "I...I suppose I _am_." She was a witch. That's what Serafina Pekkala had said. That's what she had told Evelyn and Susan. It was the truth—and, she realized with a start, it was one more critical reason to keep Pantalaimon out of harm's way. _We become them..._ The students perished once their dæmons were claimed, but the witches would not die. Perhaps their stretched ties—and _her _loosened tie with Pantalaimon—were enough to ensure that. Lyra's lips tightened into a thin line.

"That's it." He seemed satisfied for once, and his pale body melted into the pale air as he drew back. "I knew there was something about you."

"Have you met witches before?" she wondered. She could barely see him now. His lurid face had all but vanished, and only his dark eyes and black hair were clearly visible.

"Once. And there are more coming."

Lyra's heart erupted into life in her ears, and James cocked his head at her in amusement, as if he could clearly hear the frenzied pulse. He flashed a deadly smile. "Don't worry, Lyra Silvertongue. I'll protect you."

Though as soon as he uttered those words, a fiery red form burst madly into the clearing, and James swallowed his words. Lyra felt gravity suddenly grow stronger, and for all her effort, she couldn't stand up fast enough, she couldn't reach him fast enough. And all the time that James rushed forward at him, gaining on him as a tern might gain on a chitin, Lyra could only stumble to her feet in a fluster as her eyes connected with Pantalaimon's. The idiotic dæmon saw the blood on Lyra's face and froze, and in that same moment, James caught him.

But this time, the netopýr didn't hesitate.

* * *

Sorry for such a late update! I know I disappointed some of you... Real life caught up with me, and I utterly forgot that I should update this story. The next chapter will arrive at some time over the next week, to make up for it!

Nimfalas


	13. Deathbed

**Chapter 12: Deathbed**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

_Lyra felt gravity suddenly grow stronger, and for all her effort, she couldn't stand up fast enough, she couldn't reach him fast enough. And all the time that James rushed forward at him, gaining on him as a tern might gain on a chitin, Lyra could only stumble to her feet in a fluster as her eyes connected with Pantalaimon's. The idiotic daemon saw the blood on Lyra's face and froze, and in that same moment, James caught him._

_But this time, the netopýr didn't hesitate._

"Do you think he made it?" Evelyn whispered. Susan looked up, ash-white, and spoke quietly.

"Sure he did."

Lurianne, the beautiful rosy tarantula dæmon, sat perfectly still on Evelyn's head as one of the nurses gently wrapped her injured shoulder in a gauzy cloth. The amber-feathered arrow that had pierced her earlier now lay unobtrusively on the nearest nightstand, and Lurianne's small, fragile body shivered anxiously at the sight of her human's blood glistening on the shaft. Susan sat straight upright on an adjacent bed, a look of glossy horror fastened into her wide eyes and pale face. Lurianne watched the nurse's pygmy elephant dæmon return into the other bedside with a bit of disinfectant pooled in his trunk. Evelyn watched too, and imagined that the dæmon suited the nurse's profession well; she had learned from her father that elephants and mongooses were among the only animals besides humans that care for the sick and injured in their family groups. The smaller elephant made use of his hospitable nature as he gently cared for McCager, who had been a prisoner in the jowls of the netopýr only half an hour before. As his deft trunk cleaned the strange puncture wounds on the duck dæmon's colorful body, he couldn't help but wonder what had caused them. No human being would ever touch another person's dæmon, so these bite marks must have been caused by another dæmon. And then—what had shot Susan's companion with an arrow?

The nurse felt her dæmon's fear and cringed with the same doubts. The arrow had come from a witch, the headmistress had said, and if witches and their dæmons could do such damage to innocent students, then what a spectacle was sure to erupt soon!

"Susan," Evelyn tried again at length, her brown-hazel eyes watching the elephant thoughtfully, "we must get out of here."

The nurse and the elephant stopped to glare at her for a moment, but decided to ignore the remark as Susan's eyes flashed repulsion and horror.

"I will do no such thing!"

The nurse relaxed.

"Why not?" Evelyn interjected. Always the patient one, this new Evelyn was a shock for Susan, who had known her longer than anyone. Or rather, this new _side _of Evelyn was shocking. Susan watched Lurianne wait patiently in the muted brown hair of her human, clicking her mouthparts.

"Have you lost your mind completely?" McCager quacked, his wild red dæmon eyes staring at Evelyn in disbelief. "If we return for Lyra, we'll only be hurting ourselves! What makes you think that _we_ will be able to help? We are prey—only prey to him. Lurianne may be small, but she would certainly be a tasty snack for that disgusting—"

"Cage!" Lurianne exclaimed at once, her small dæmon voice ringing. Both girls and their dæmons had forgotten the paling nurse's presence (despite how hard it may seem to forget the presence of an elephant in the room). "And how did you suppose _we_ felt, rushing out to our deaths to save _you_?"

A moment of heavy silence followed as realization slowly settled on the inhabitants of the room. McCager ruffled his feathers quietly and waddled back a few paces into the arms of his Susan.

"She's right," Susan whispered quietly, coming out of her shell-shocked trance. "Lyra did not abandon _us_, Cage… She came for us, and look! We escaped."

"Scarred though we are," the duck muttered, "I suppose we _did_."

"Then we must go back for her," Evelyn said, charged with all the adrenaline of a predator's ambush. "If the adults will do nothing, _we_ will try, at least!"

Before the nurse could protest, Susan's mouth dropped and Evelyn leaned back into bed. "What?" she murmured, watching Susan's wide green eyes. They seemed fastened to the window behind Evelyn's head. Her heart leapt into her throat. "What is it?"

Evelyn turned to see for herself, and at first all she saw was a dark cloud growing. As the shape drew nearer, however, the mist began to part and Evelyn could see that the shape was, in fact, many forms moving together, shifting and swaying like a cloud of great birds. But, of course, both girls knew that this approaching flock was not feathered; in fact, there was no sight of any birds—dæmon or otherwise—within sight. This shifting, moving cloud was the approaching clan of the Lake Enara witches.

* * *

_Schliikt_

Lyra's world became black as she plunged headfirst into icy waters, numb with shock and cold and fear. The human body has an amazing ability to shut out unpleasant things—to suppress thought in times where thoughts can only hurt, to deaden pain when the smarting stings are too powerful to bear. Lyra Silvertongue felt only the gentle, numbing sway of her body as the waves rocked over her, her fingers dead to the moisture and cold, her mind drifting away in a void free of the water and reality. It happened suddenly, and the only sound that penetrated the sea's depths was a rhythmic pulse that awoke every primordial feeling of safety within her body. The fear had gone too; every cry of her heart had vanished in the sinking bubble that plummeted deeper into the empty darkness. Empty darkness suffocated by the accelerating pulse that thudded dully in her ears.

But neither adrenaline nor endorphins, nor any other tactic fashioned by her human mind could tear away reality for long. The anguish of Lyra's heart, the real aching fear, the dreadful reality punctured the darkness like a prick of a pin, and the sharp pain returned in a nauseating wave as the balloon ruptured. With a shriek of terror, Lyra surfaced in the clearing, wet from the fog and the sweat and the blood, twisting deeper into the grunge with a sharp cry of protest and pain, clawing blindly at the feet of the netopýr.

This was her reality, doubled by the reality felt and lived by the embodiment of her soul. Pantalaimon was the true victim, his fear and desperate cries reverberating louder in her own heart than anything she cared to feel or think. Pantalaimon, her dear Pan—no, no, her poor heart, her dear soul, oh God, _please_, _NO!_—Pan!

Lyra was too disoriented, too dizzy to fight. She felt her body move with a will of its own, biting into the half-dead flesh of her assailant, scraping at his feet, too weak to stand or punch or kick, but fading quickly…

Then she felt Pantalaimon's poor dæmon mind fall into darkness, and Lyra's world grew clearer as his panicked thoughts faded into unconsciousness. But her recovery was short-lived as her own panicked thoughts took the place of his, and her clear mind wandered dangerously as she felt her dæmon's growing weakness weigh down her limbs.

This was the beginning of her end. This was Bolvangar all over again, though the mesh cage was the iron grip of hands on her soul, the blade a pair of sparkling teeth, and her separation from Pantalaimon brutally more final than anything the General Oblation Board could have achieved. And this time, there was no Mrs. Coulter to save them. There was only the imminent death of Pantalaimon and the utter terror of Lyra's inevitable survival.

So this was the existence of a netopýr. To live dæmonless, soulless, as one's body and mind continue to trudge on, alone as no human being was created to be. To live without Pantalaimon eternally, never to reunite with him at last through the window in the Land of the Dead. Never to exist alongside her precious dæmon again. Never, never, _never_.

Never.

Lyra had no control over her tears, nor any will to control them as she sobbed recklessly into the damp earth. How could she live without her friend, her lifelong companion, her heart, her _soul_? She recalled the pitiless expression in James's stoic stare, the lack of compassion in his eyes. He didn't even know his dæmon's name—that one all-important utterance. Even stripped raw of its meaning and the memories and emotions it bore, a name is something. But he knew not even her _name_—a single, miserable _word_ to describe a whole half of his being.

She would never forget Pantalaimon. She would never live without Pantalaimon. Her dæmon was fading rapidly, and every brutal second that passed seemed to return energy to Lyra's limbs. Was this the effect of becoming a netopýr, or was this Fate reaching out his hand, giving her the final push that she needed? She would not live without Pan. That simple statement clicked into her mind as a static fact, and she reached into the grass for the slender savior that she had spotted moments before.

Any alternative seemed infinitely more wonderful than the permanent, irreversible death that closed around her even now.

And reuniting with Pantalaimon through that window, waiting atom for atom in the grass and the sky and the soil for Will Parry's and Kirjava's atoms to mix with theirs, to spend an eternity alongside the world, sharing an existence with Pantalaimon _and_ every part of this world and others, sharing her existence with Will in the glorious shadow of natural death…_that_ alternative shone like a beacon on the horizon of her mind's eye as she positioned the amber-feathered arrow over her breast.

As it plunged, the air sang with an enormous cry, as if the trees and the grass themselves shouted just beyond sight, hidden behind the curtain of mist. The sky seemed to come alive with innumerable black shapes and forms, darting in and out of the great white fog-screen. Her hand dropped with a choking sob of defeat, and the sleek shaft of a witch's arrow caught her flesh as many others pierced the air around her. Throughout every limb of her body, the icy grip of the air battled heavily with the warm leakage of life-giving blood, and at last neither succeeded; it was the darkness that finally claimed her with the same cycling of waves she had felt when James's fangs first pierced her Pantalaimon…the rocking promising her death, her reunion with…with Pantalaimon…the waves washing over her head…the…the steady undulating…

_th-thump_

rocking…echoing…

_th-thump_

_th-thump…_

_b-thump…b-buh…_

… _b-bump…_

…_buh..._

..._bump_...

...


	14. Corollary

**Chapter 13: Corollary**

Insatiable

Author: Rachel Roth (Nimfalas)

Rated T

Fandom: His Dark Materials (Golden Compass/Northern Lights)

* * *

It was horrifying.

She tried to fight, but the frigid water froze her limbs. Numbness seeped into every cell of her body, lulling her into sleep. It wasn't any use fighting anymore as she fell closer and closer to…Death?

The only thing she was sure of was the sudden aching of her heart.

When Lyra woke up, it took an agonizing moment for the fog to clear from her mind. A pronounced stillness occupied the space around her, and she shuddered at the utter quiet. Something brushed against her exposed arm, and she flinched. She wailed and thrashed in protest, trying to fight it away. A drone filled the air, high and shrieking, and her wide eyes took in only blurs of dull color and flashes of white.

Cold, pale white.

The world rocked and shook, and she could feel her hair lash at her shoulders. Her knees and legs ached in protest, but she kicked and kicked. She tried to open her mouth to scream at it. She tried to move her stiff, cold lips to form words, but they were locked in place and her lungs were preoccupied; the horrible shrieking sound was coming from _her._

Lyra's "attacker" must have had horrible patience, because the pale figure before her waited tolerantly for the fit to end. Eventually her body tired, and she collapsed in defeat, waiting on the warm ground for death.

Of course, she knew the fact that she was _alive_—in spite of her attempts—meant that she was almost certainly already technically dead.

She shuddered at the thought of the word and all that it entailed, biting her lips and hugging her arms tighter around her chest.

She was _dead_.

"Lyra," called a soothing voice. "Are you finished?" The voice was smooth and melodic. Its calming spell washed over her, but she was too spent to feel the relief. The voice was one she could recognize anywhere.

"Serafina Pekkala!" she gasped, her voice breaking wretchedly. It was the first coherent word she'd spoken since regaining consciousness.

Bitter, lonely consciousness.

In response, the pale witch simply nodded her head. Lyra sat up slowly, noticing for the first time the blanket beneath her hips, the spilled flask at her feet, the carefully wrapped bundle at her side that shifted minutely. Lyra paused at the bundle of the woolen blanket, watching the cat-sized lump shift more noticeably. She felt her heart stir with the waking thoughts of her other half, and suddenly the world grew unfocused as a feeling of such pure, miserable respite swept over every one of her human senses. She groped blindly for the form and pulled it to her chest slowly, relaxing into a recumbent posture with her bundle clutched against her breast. She could not even whimper his name, because the moment her mouth opened, she could only utter cracked, broken sobs as her face drained of color.

Fully awake and fully feeling the onslaught of Lyra's thoughts and emotions, Pantalaimon relaxed silently into his human's grasp, whimpering soft purrs of absolute love and affection over her dying sobs.

"Oh, Pan, darling," she muttered in a small, aching voice when at last she could speak. "Oh, Pan…you're _here._ I love you so much—I love you, I love you—I'm so sorry…"

"I know, Lyra," he whispered back, his tiny voice cracking in the wrong place. "And _I'm_ sorry. I was so worried…Lyra, I love you more than _anything_…" His frenetic little heartbeat raced faster than her own, which pounded dangerously in her ears. Pantalaimon glanced up into her eyes with an expression that nearly broke her heart.

Serafina Pekkala shifted, watching the reunion and hating to interrupt the beautiful event. At last Lyra's thoughts settled, and Serafina Pekkala didn't need to interrupt.

How was this possible?

Pantalaimon pulled away from her too soon, and immediately she regretted wondering. It didn't matter how—all that mattered was her precious dæmon! But Pan didn't move any further. He simply turned his attention to the witch.

Lyra had forgotten all about Serafina Pekkala, but she turned expectantly to her now as well. Her face flushed hot with embarrassment, realizing how patiently she had waited, and Lyra's glazed eyes searched hers. Serafina Pekkala shifted, not uncomfortably, and stared back.

"Thank you," Lyra murmured, lowering her eyes. "Thank you for saving us. Pantalaimon was…we nearly…" She allowed the words to drift away, unable to continue the thought. How could she possibly think of losing her heart? How could she imagine living without her reason for existing?

"You have lost much of your blood." Serafina Pekkala's voice was calm and even, but almost distant. "Both of you. I understand the choice that you suffered, my dear sister, and I do not count you a coward for your action. No nobility lies in losing one's soul, and none can allay that misery of death through any course but death."

Pan pulled himself closer to Lyra's breast, sharing her uneasy recollections. She stroked his back, memorizing the texture of his fur, the slant of his body. Through the coarse red fur she felt the knobs of scabby wounds, and Lyra's hand clasped around the fur, trembling.

"You may recall," Serafina Pekkala began, her warm eyes fastened on Lyra's shaking, clenched fist, "it was several years ago, now, but I believe you remember every word I spoke to you then"—she had addressed that to Pan—"that I informed you of the consequences of your actions. Your journey to the land of the dead, and your separation from your dæmons—" She eyed Lyra carefully, unsure of the way her face had twisted with pain. Pan licked his cold tongue across her hand, trying to comfort his shaking human. The memories of that day were seared into their minds, as painful as if it had occurred yesterday. But even more painful was the plural Serafina had used, and the obvious allusion to the other human who had joined their quest—Will Parry. Part of Lyra's heart shrieked in misery, but she composed herself desperately, carefully storing that piece of her heart away. Serafina clearly didn't believe the sudden transformation of Lyra's features, but she continued nevertheless.

"I told you that you are—in nearly every way—exactly like witches. You will not live as long as I, and you cannot fly, but in every other way you are a witch. Netopýres have been enemies of our witch clans since the moment they were created. We had thought that most were destroyed, but apparently a few remain beyond the realm of legends. I suppose you already know of their nature." Lyra Silvertongue visibly scowled, and Serafina Pekkala glanced away from her eyes. "Human beings fell victim to netopýres often, once, and they nearly always die by the encounter. Witches, on the other hand, will not die. When the spirit—ghost, as you once called it, my sister—is stretched from its soul in the way that ours are, and especially when that spirit is conscious when the soul dies by a netopýr, the spirit remains alive and undergoes that subtle transformation which fashions a netopýr. For this reason, only witches become netopýres; and for this reason, most netopýres have all the cunning and powers of a witch."

"The sleepwalking, Lyra," Pantalaimon whispered, his red-brown ears twitching upright as understanding lined his lovely features, "And those nightghasts and things."

"I have never encountered a netopýr of the male sex," Serafina Pekkala interrupted quietly, thoughtfully, "though I have heard of some shaman boys succumbing to netopýres in the past. In this case, James must have been the son of a shaman, whose dæmon was devoured as he left her on the brink of the barrens. This is the way most netopýres are formed, because the witch—or shaman—cannot protect her abandoned dæmon as it is taken. Most netopýres, then, are quite young. It is one more misfortune of their existence."

Lyra looked down, focusing on a speck of grass in the dirt. "You saved us." It wasn't a question. Serafina Pekkala looked at them carefully, a crease of worry appearing in her smooth, perfect forehead. She nodded, confirming the statement. Pan glanced up at Lyra before turning back to the witch.

"Will you tell us what happened?" he asked her nervously, almost fearing the response. Lyra felt the dread inside herself as well. Was James gone? Was it over, or was this a mere pause in their enduring torment?

"Perhaps another time." She must have identified the fear in their eyes, because she quickly added, "He is destroyed now. It is difficult to kill a netopýr, but the way has been passed down through generations of witch clans. He will never bother you or anyone else again." Her eyes flashed like a crackling fire. "The danger is never over. It never has been. Do not fool yourself into thinking this may never happen again in your lifetime. A netopýr must have created James, and his mere presence provides enough reason to suspect others. You will always know, however, that my clan will keep you beyond danger. We will always watch for the signs. With a clan of our size, no wise netopýr will consider bothering the college. Our world is large, and there are far easier targets in other reaches of our earth."

Lyra thoughtlessly smoothed her dæmon's fur again with pale, slender fingers, and she grimaced as she grazed the scabby marks on his back.

"Your dæmon will always carry the scar," Serafina Pekkala whispered, her glassy eyes locked on something distant and invisible. Lyra struggled to understand what she was saying, for her lips moved so quickly. The tone of her voice was so low that Lyra's human ears could barely pick it up. Pan heard her words and shivered. "…the mark of another person's touch…"

Lyra felt unconsciousness tug at her eyelids, and she attributed the sudden incoherence of the beautiful witch-lady to her fading brain. Before the blackness covered her, she could make out Serafina Pekkala's lullaby voice sing over the silence, "You have had a long day, Lyra Silvertongue. It is best that you rest now." Her eyes were liquid again, flowing with love and adoration. "You are my sister now more than ever. Sleep well, Lyra. You have had a long day."

The girl couldn't resist the lull of her voice. She was pulled fast into a listless sleep.

* * *

Lyra couldn't tell how long she'd slept, but when she opened her eyes, she found herself in a familiar bed, staring at a familiar wall. It was her dorm room.

Lyra bolted up—throwing a disgruntled Pan halfway across the bed—and scoured the room, looking for netopýres and witches or… They were very alone in the little dungeon.

Pan moaned at her feet and bounded toward her in the dachshund waddle she loved so much. He always made it look so graceful. She apologized fervently, begging him to forgive her and laughing at his playful pout. He couldn't stay mad for long, and he bounded into her lap, cuddling into her arms and playing with her fingers.

"Ah!"—shouted a familiar voice from outside the door—"Lyra's awake!" Lyra and Pantalaimon braced for an impact, but the door calmly unlocked itself and the colorful, crested duck dæmon McCager soared through the room first. Susan and Evelyn followed after—the tarantula dæmon resting quietly on Evelyn's head, waving her foremost pedipalps in the air in excitement—and Dame Hannah was last to enter. The elderly woman closed the door behind her, and Lyra could just make out the faces of other interested students behind the frame.

"Lyra, we were worried," Susan said, her heart-shaped face appearing in Lyra's vision. The blonde girl scooted over and allowed her two friends to share the bed on either side. Dame Hannah moved toward her charge and touched Lyra's cheek with a few ringed fingers.

"My dear girl, you are something," the Dame patronized, patting her shoulder with a matronly warmth. The marmoset dæmon clung to her blouse and rolled his eyes with a glowering smile.

"Evelyn, your arm!" Lyra exclaimed, noticing her sling.

"Just the arrow," the girl answered, setting her dæmon on the sheets. "I'm alright."

"Susan?" Lyra wondered hesitantly, turning to her other side.

"Well, I suppose I'm worse for wear," she smiled. "And yourself?"

"Just perfect," Lyra answered, releasing Pantalaimon from her shaky grasp. "Though I haven't the foggiest idea _how_."

The girls chuckled nervously, exchanging meek glances. Dame Hannah watched them from the side, her marmoset surveying the dæmons as they slid onto the floor, speaking lightly to each other and smiling wearily. The girls themselves began to open, and their faces grew warmer as they spoke, a real friendship sparking its way through the pieces of shared experiences and twists of fate. Seeing the color in Lyra's face and the bright shine in her eyes, Dame Hannah quietly retired from the dorm room, pushing past nosy girls on her way out. Along the corridor and down a flight of scarlet stairs, the silk-clad form of Serafina Pekkala met the elderly woman. She nodded her head in recognition.

"Serafina Pekkala," the Dame said, her peppered dæmon climbing to her shoulder, "you can trust Lyra to be well with us. She's found friends, and she will always have my support."

"I am glad to hear it," the witch responded in a smooth, musical voice. Then, "I am sorry for your losses. Had we known sooner what haunted your wood—"

"Do not apologize, my friend," the Dame cut in. "I speak for the entire college when I say that we are forever indebted to you and your clan. Our sorrow could have been greater." The elderly woman took a sure breath. "No thanks could suffice."

"No thanks are necessary."

"They looked like a great cloud," sang a voice through an open window above them. "And then they dove on the forest…"

Serafina Pekkala looked Dame Hannah long in the face, uncertainty lining her ancient eyes. "Should you ever need me—should Lyra ever need me—you know how to find me."

The two nodded in farewell, and then Serafina Pekkala, swathed in black like a fire of darkness flickering through the sky, clutched her cloudpine in one hand, and took to the sky in flight. Her dark form joined the many others hanging over the college like watchful stars, and from the open window, Pantalaimon and the other dæmons watched them streak away, like shooting stars of night.

Lyra turned to see them leave, but her heart—at last—felt contented to stay. What use was dreaming of flying away with her sisters, of escaping the campus to other worlds, when she was finally beginning to feel at home—as though she actually belonged in this world? The battle hadn't ended, but she had won two friends already. Pantalaimon sighed happily as he thought the same thoughts, watching the last witches vanish into the distance.

St. Sophia's might make a lovely home after all.

The End

* * *

Did you enjoy _Insatiable_? Hate the end? Drop a review, and be on the look-out for _The Post-Lyra Chronicles_ (a story of Will's struggles in his own world and the discovery of a sinister stratagem that could throw more than _one_ world into disarray...).


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